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Trends an important part of annual poll
The yearly residents survey is designed to
give the City Council’s planners and politicians
a regular gauge of how Christchurch people
feel about their city, about selected Council
services and about some topical issues.
Its value comes over time, says Rex
Harrison, who heads the survey project for
the Council. “I’m always asked what’s done with it,” he
says. “It’s an important part of the decisionmaking
process, especially when preparing the
Annual Plan. Councillors get information from
people who make submissions, and from the
survey.That way they get a good picture of what
the people of Christchurch are looking for.” The survey is done in late March for the
Council by the National Research Bureau. The
Council sets aside $75,000 to pay for it.The
survey sampling — based on a model devised
in 1991 by Statistics New Zealand —
randomly selects properties that house a
good cross section of everyone who makes
up the city of Christchurch. Surveyors go to those homes and do face-toface
interviews. According to Mr Harrison, the
results have a margin of error of around 3 per
cent at the 90% confidence level. “We are 90%
confident the results are within 3% of what you
would get if you interviewed everyone. “What that means is you need to see a rise
or fall of at least 4.5% to be able to say for
sure there’s been a real change over the last
year,” he says. “I think its great value is in the way it shows
trends.We’ve been running it since 1991 and
many of the questions have been asked every
year – things like value for money for rates
for various selected services, whether we
should be spending more or less on those
areas, satisfaction with things like the Council’s
libraries and events and festivals. “That means you are able to see if the level
of satisfaction about some issue is steady, or
rising over time, or has begun to drop off or
if the proportion of people who are unhappy
about something is starting to drop. “The way it’s designed, it’s a very good
survey in terms of confidence level – your
ability to trust it as an accurate reflection of
how people feel.” The annual survey results, from 1997 and
including this year’s results, are on the Council’s
website — at www.ccc.govt.nz/residentssurvey |