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Note: Session titles beginning with an asterisk (*) have student presenters.
AUTHORS: Mark Damian Duda, Executive Director, Responsive Management
ABSTRACT: Human dimensions data collection includes scientific surveys and focus groups of randomly selected individuals, but also non-scientific avenues such as public meetings and online forums that ensure opportunities for all residents to provide input. The differences in input from scientific and non-scientific avenues are often stark, with the latter sometimes showing higher levels of salience and dissatisfaction. However, the nonrandom methods of input are important for measuring the saliency of various issues as well as satisfaction among those who provide input; these methods also protect the agency from the charge that input is limited only to a small number of residents (or that “only a few thousand people out of millions” are sampled as part of the data collection). While the data from each source must be considered in the proper perspective, the totality of data (and the fact that residents have multiple opportunities to provide input) is nonetheless important. However, agencies that rely only on non-scientific assessments of public opinion, such as commission meetings, public meetings, letters, phone calls, and open-ended surveys, run the risk of being led into management decisions that do not reflect mainstream views and preferences. This presentation addresses the rather common conundrum of how agencies must weigh comments from nonrandom samples with survey data that reflect what the public actually thinks and wants. The presentation incorporates the findings of numerous Responsive Management studies and discusses how scientific and nonscientific data can be reconciled with one another and incorporated into management plans and other agency products.
Tuesday October 31, 2017 1:40pm - 2:00pm EDT
Beckham