On Monday the Citizen reported that KPMG received "2,049 completed online surveys" as part of the City's Core Services Review. This is not correct and overstates the number of people who responded to the survey in a big way.
Page 7 of the August 30 report states there were 2,049 "responses" to the 48 questions about city services. These are responses to questions, not people responding to the survey. I completed the entire survey so 48 of those responses were mine.
The report does not state the number of real people who responded. The numbers on page 7 suggest that approximately 20 people completed the entire survey (accounting for about half of the responses) and another 200 or so people stated an opinion about a smaller number of services.
The average number of responses per service can be calculated if you know how many services were included in each of the seven program areas.
This average drops steeply after the first program area. That may indicate that a number of people who initially intended to respond to this very difficult survey became fatigued and dropped out as they went along. The number of responses to each of the 48 individual services was not provided in the report but it is possible that a fair number of respondents cherry picked one or two services that they wanted to support or oppose.
I am disappointed that nobody has stepped forward to correct the mistaken impression that a large number of citizens responded to this online survey.
Anne Hogan
Prince George
