Frequently Asked Questions
Below is a bullet point version of answers to common questions and comments. We have also prepared a much more detailed narrative style description of what we do and how we do it and why we do it. Methodology
- Who is Madrona Voices?
- Steve and Jennifer Smith. We welcome others to join us in sharing their research and studies about our community. We live on Orcas Island year round. We have lived here since 2014.
- Why are we doing this?
- We like our community. As in previous communities where we’ve resided, we want to know more about it and to strive with others to help it continue to be a great place for all. Our belief is that the more people know about community desires and needs, the better the decisions that are made.
- To provide the public with a way to express their position even if they don’t attend a meeting.
- To provide decision makers with an accurate and representative sample of what the public thinks.
- To provide a factual summary of the key points of various issues.Many times a small group of people will show up at a meeting and say they want something or want something to be done in a certain way. Sometimes they tell the decision makers that the public agrees with them and that they represent the public. Sometimes a small number of people are able to influence important decisions because they have taken the time to organize and show up at meetings that no one else does. Sometimes the public shares the same goals, sometimes they don’t.Meetings are often held when most people are at work. Many of the meetings do not allow the public to participate except for a brief period of time at the beginning or end. Often the council members, commissioners, board members want public involvement but struggle to find ways to engage the public. Even when open meetings are held attendance is often light.We do this to help provide the community with a way to participate. We do this to help the decision makers discover what the public thinks.
- What will we do with the information?
- We are sharing our research here. We share it with those who can make decisions based on the research.
- It is not the policy of Madrona Voices to endorse any particular idea, candidate, or position. We strive to be as unbiased as possible in our questions and in our results reporting. We don’t always think of everything, but we’ll try to come up with the best questions we can to gain helpful information. Our heart is in making this a site where the voices of the survey takers can be viewed, not solely the voices of one group or another. In other words, if you want your voice to be heard, this is another way to make that happen. If you think someone you know is being left out, then tell them about these surveys or help them take it or get their opinions in other ways. We survey-makers may take each survey once ourselves as fellow citizens with a voice, but we are not here on this site or in our results to judge or critique the opinions of other survey takers.
- Who is paying us or asking us to do the surveys?
- We do not receive pay for the community profile surveys that we do.
- We do accept pay for specific projects such as income survey work on behalf of the County or a taxing district which needs to qualify for state and federal financial assistance and must demonstrate the financial need.
- We do consider requests for a survey. We will work with various entities to craft a survey to make sure that the background information, the questions, and the answer options are as fair and unbiased as possible.
- Perhaps you have an idea for a survey you would like to see happen. Contact us with your ideas and thoughts.
- So, what motivates us to be doing this?
- As we told some of our newer friends who asked that, we are doing this as another way to serve our community. Like most of you, we love it here, and we think the residents are pretty awesome. So, we think it’d be good to put our particular skills and experiences to use in a productive way. What’s in it for us? Well, another thing we mentioned to these same friends, we’re information geeks/research fanatics/stats lovers. (smile) We’ve both had experience creating surveys.
- Are the surveys representative of the community?
- Yes. Sometime people ask if it is scientific. We conduct all of our surveys online. We send email invitations to the public and ask them to participate. Anyone who lives on island or owns property on island is welcome to share their email address with us and we will include them in our work. For the surveys to be accurate, they need to match the population of the demographic that is being studied. Many of our surveys will attempt to match the voting demographic. That means we will try and match the demographic profile of those who vote. If we wanted to survey what parents of children thought about an issue we would need to make sure that the survey we did found and asked parents what they thought. That would be a different demographic than the voting demographic. So any survey, first needs to decide, who is it that we want the opinion of. Then the next step is to find a way to verify that those that are invited to take the survey match the desired demographic. The next step is to make sure that the responses to the survey match up with the population being studied. We work hard to make sure that whatever topic we are researching or surveying that those that we invite and that respond match the necessary demographic.
- Why do we require email addresses to take our surveys?
- Money
- We are not paid to do the surveys. We do this because we think it benefits the community. Because we find it fun and interesting to do. Because it fills a need. It costs us about $2,000 a year to operate Madrona Voices plus the time that we dedicate.