And speaking of the questions on the telephone poll conducted by Synovate I now have a copy of the polling questions and results as commissioned by the engineering dept. I emailed the mayor last night at about 8.30, he got back to me at 9.30 , I phoned his secretary this morning and had a copy by email this afternoon. (as an aside, I emailed Clr. Bev Dornan 2 days ago and got no reply at all)
I read this poll and had some questions so I took it to my neighbor who has a PHD in statistics, polls etc. from UBC. His comment was that the poll is basically “sh*t". I said OK, but can you be more specific.
In fairness to the mayor or anyone else who is not an expert in polling (including myself) knowing the questions and agreeing to them is irrelevant if you don't understand the intracasies of polling..
First of all 401 household heads were called.
The first question was:
“Are you aware of the proposal to build a new road and overpass at 64th Ave/Mufford and Highway 10 to allow car traffic to be routed over the railway track.”
64% (256) said yes and 36%(144) said they were not aware. My expert neighbor says those 144 who knew nothing of the overpass should have been told “thank you” and disregarded. But they were allowed to continue on in the questions asked in the poll. This becomes important later on. Also this question is somewhat misleading because the overpass in nowhere near Highway 10, in fact it will be almost ½ mile north.
The next question was:
“Overall, do you support or oppose the plan to build the overpass or do you not have an opinion either way?”
49% said they supported it.
My question here is “how many of the 36% who said they knew nothing of this overpass were included in the 49%?”
They then went on to ask various questions as to why or why not you support or oppose it.
Question number 5 then asks:
“Now that you’ve heard some of the reasons for and against the overpass, would you prefer to see the project go ahead or be canceled.”
So they took the 36% who said they knew nothing about the overpass and told them the pros and cons( at least that they decided were cons) and then asked them to make an informed decision. This is ludicrous. How can you take someone who has not even heard about the overpass and ask them "do you think it will use too much farmland" and expect an intelligent answer.
One of the other reasons my friend condemned this poll is because of the use of "double barreled" questions.
For example one question says do you agree:
"the overpass will improve safety by separating rail trafffic from car traffic AND enhance emergency service response times".
There are really two questions but you may not agree with both yet you can't say yes to one and no to the other".
If you take the people who were polled (401) and look at the 49% in favor (196) compare that to the number of questionnaires collected at the open house(I THINK the number is between 3-400 but not sure) and take Jordan's figure of 75% against that works out to 225-300 against.
The other thing to keep in mind is that of the 64% who indicated they were aware of the overpass there would be varying degrees of knowledge ranging from “they heard about it” to “they were very informed”.
On the other hand those who went to the open house, if they weren’t real interested and informed before would certainly be very knowledgeable when they filled out the questionnaire.
So you tell me which group represents the citizens of the township.
Mayor Green was right when he called this a sham!
Researched and submitted by
Horny Toad - 03.12.09 at 10:36 pm...
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