Suggestions for County Utilization of the Florida Citizens Viewpoint 1999 Questionnaire

The Florida Citizens Viewpoint 1999 questionnaire has been developed for use as a state level telephone survey to assess citizens perceptions of the importance of selected issues and educational needs as related to their community. The information gathered will be generalizable state-wide and to a more limited extent to the Extension districts. The telephone survey should be completed by the end of March and will generate a state-wide list of priorities. A summary of the results will be provided to each county.

The survey instrument can be easily adapted for use at the county level, which would provide local perceptions of the importance of issues and educational needs. The issues and educational needs cut across the various Extension program areas, and the results could be very useful in planning, particularly in working with the Overall Advisory Committee in establishing broad programmatic priorities. Basically, all that would be required for use at the county level is changing the heading to identify with the specific county, e.g., "Citrus County Citizens Viewpoint". Changes could also be made in other components of the questionnaire to better assess the local situation, if desired.

The Issues and Educational Needs

The issues and educational needs listed in the questionnaire cover a fairly broad spectrum, but are certainly not all encompassing. A conscious attempt was made to keep the lists as brief and focused as possible by limiting the items to areas that Extension could reasonably be expected to address. Issues and educational needs may be added or deleted based on the desires of the user. NOTE: Wholesale changes can affect comparability to district and state-wide data.

Accessing the Questionnaire

The questionnaire may be printed directly from the Web site (Program Development and Evaluation Center; [click on] UF/IFAS Administration; Long-Range Program, 2000-2003), but it cannot be modified on-screen. If printing from the web page, the page break points will probably need adjusting. This can be done by clicking on "file" on the tool bar, and then "page set up" which will allow you to adjust your bottom margin; you can view the questionnaire before printing by clicking on "print preview".

A much more "user friendly" means of printing and working with the questionnaire is through an E-mail attachment in Word Perfect. As a Word Perfect document, the questionnaire can be downloaded and modified on the screen, such as localizing the heading, adding or deleting items, etc. If difficulty is experienced in downloading the attached file, or it is necessary to send the information on a diskette, E-mail, FAX or call Dr. Steve Jacob. His address is listed at the end of this document.

Administering the Questionnaire

The questionnaire may be administered in several ways. Three ways are as follows:

1. The easiest way is to use it as a distributed questionnaire with an "accidental" sample of people. In other words, ask those with whom Extension has day-to-day contact to take a few moments and fill out the questionnaire (our pilot study indicated that it takes from 8 to 10 minutes to complete it). This could be accomplished through meetings and workshops, plant clinics, farm and home visits, FCE club meetings, 4-H leader meetings, county fair visitors, visitors to the Extension Office, etc., etc. Most people will be willing to take a few minutes and fill it out for you. The more and greater cross section of people that fill it out the better the information!
2. Use as a mail survey. This would give more generalizable data at a much higher degree of confidence. However, a mail survey requires more planning, structure and expense. A random sample of the general population would need to be drawn to be sent the questionnaire. In generalization of the findings, to achieve a precision of +/- 10%, for example, a minimum of 100 responses would be required. A simpler alternative not requiring a sampling process, but sacrificing a substantial degree of generalizability, would be to survey all of those on Extension mailing lists. For counties with large numbers of names on their mailing list, a systematic sample could be utilized (see Program Development and Evaluation Center Web site: Publications; Program Development Handbook; Sampling; Determining Sample Size; PEOD-5 (Israel), 1992).
   
   For either alternative, a cover letter would be needed explaining the purpose and importance of the survey and the details of getting it completed and returned. Envelopes would have to be addressed or mailing labels prepared. Postage paid return envelopes would need to be provided, and at least a couple of follows-up with non respondents would be needed. Postage cost would probably run at least $1.00 per response. It also takes about a month to carry out a mail survey. The process would need to be begun very soon for the data to be ready for use with advisory committees in April or May.
3. Use as a telephone survey. Volunteers and/or master gardeners, etc., could help with the calling. Most calls would probably be on local service, so there would be minimum expense from that standpoint. A major problem is the length of the questionnaire, as it is very long for a telephone survey. This could be resolved by splitting the issue and educational needs items into smaller subsets and each person contacted being asked to respond only to a particular subset. For example, to achieve a precision of +/- 10%, the sampling process would need to generate a group two to three times larger than normally required, depending on the number of subsets, in order to attain the required 100 responses to each item.
   
   A second problem with a telephone survey is that people sometimes get irritated with these kind of calls. But being identified with the University of Florida and the local Extension office, and asking people's opinions about things that may be of substantive concern to them, should alleviate that difficulty to a great degree.

Data Analysis

A computer spreadsheet (e.g. Excel or Quattro Pro) can be used to input data, calculate frequencies and establish two-way tables with demographic variables.

Obtaining Help

If you have questions about any of the above processes, including sampling, contact Dr. Glenn Israel (gdi@ifas.ufl.edu) or Dr. Steve Jacob (sgj@ifas.ufl.edu), Program Evaluation and Organizational Development, SUN 622-0386, FAX (352)392-9633.

A Word of Appreciation

Sincere appreciation is expressed to the following County Extension Directors and their staffs for their help in developing and critiquing the questionnaire: Carolyn Best, David Holmes, Muriel Turner, Dee Wilkins, Denise Blanton, Lawrence Heitmeyer, Austin Tilton, Mary Williams, Gerald Edmondson, and Deborah Boulware.

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