Downtown Steering Committee - Survey

Downtown Steering Committee – The Survey Says

If you haven’t been paying attention you may not have seen that the Downtown Steering Committee (DSC) under the guidance of urban planning consultant, RBA, has made available a public survey intended to glean from Westport residents a vision of what the town could look like in the future. The intention is sound however the survey and the process being used for data gathering are flawed. To date there have been 500+ responses to the survey which is available both electronically and in hard copy. The survey specifically targets responses from Westport residents but there are no controls or requirements that can be used to identify that the person filling out the survey is in fact from Westport. Additionally the DSC cannot prevent individuals from inputting more than one response to the survey.   

During the initial issuance of the electronic survey, committee members realized that people could send the survey in multiple times. One of the DSC members actually noted that he had performed the survey and submitted it on at least 2 occasions. After recognizing the problem the DSC revisited their process and built in a control using the computer device’s IP address (representing the identity of a specific computer) to prevent anyone from answering the survey more than once from the same device. This control lacks integrity since every electronic device has its own IP address. Anyone with more than one device, for example an IPad, mobile phone or an additional computer, could submit as many surveys as devices available. Since there is no requirement to identify respondents, it is impossible to know how many times an individual may have submitted multiple surveys and more importantly if the person responding is even a Westport resident.

The data gathered to date cannot be relied on and lacks integrity. In view of the facts, the DSC needs to respect its goal of public transparency, bite the bullet, revisit their processes and reissue the survey incorporating a tested set of well designed controls.