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For a more general explanation of the weighting process, take a look at this article. Below are some more technical FAQs about Polco’s weighting practices. Q: Why should data be weighted?A: The purpose of weighting is to make results more representative of the entire community. Those who respond to a specific survey effort are not always representative of the total population; there are some groups that are often underrepresented (such as young adults and renters). Weighting looks at the demographics of respondents and adjusts the results to bring them more in line with demographic proportions for the entire community. For this reason, weighting is a best practice in the survey research industry and is recommended for the most accurate, representative data.Q: How exactly does weighting work?A: We compare certain demographic variables (age, race, gender, ethnicity, housing type, and housing tenure) between the survey respondents and the entire community. We then use an iterative statis
The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing public health concerns and created new health crises to address. Even people who have not become sick with COVID-19 are managing stress, uncertainty, and isolation during this challenging time. The Crater Health District (CHD) and its partners need real time data to prioritize resources and inform policy actions. CHD in Collaboration with OneHopewell created a survey to understand the specific needs of populations that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, including its social and economic impacts. CHD and OneHopewell will use and share this data (i.e. your responses) to prioritize our pandemic response and to create new, collaborative solutions with community partners. Would you be willing to complete this COVID-19 Impact Survey?
While nonprobability-based surveys are a great way to engage a lot of residents, it can be hard to know whether you’re reaching a representative sample of your community. The demographics of those who respond to a survey are not always aligned with the total population: some demographic groups (such as young adults and renters) often respond at lower rates, which may cause them to be underrepresented in survey results.For this reason, Polco automatically provides representivity visualizations for all nonprobability-based surveys, to help gauge who you’re reaching with your engagement efforts. This makes it easier to identify which groups are responding at lower levels (proportionate to your community), see where additional outreach may be needed, and adjust your communication efforts accordingly. In addition, Polco also offers an optional automatic weighting feature to balance any discrepancies you might see in those graphs and increase the overall representivity of your results. Toget
About RolesPolco makes it easy for profile administrators to create and manage user accounts, assign roles and permissions, and control access to various features and functionalities. Roles allow you to assign the appropriate level of access for each administrative user, ensuring that your organization can confidently and efficiently work together within Polco. To view Polco’s roles and permissions, navigate to the Account Settings menu using the left sidebar. This will open the Administrators account management page. At the top, you’ll see an overview of the different permission levels available: Manager, Publisher, Collaborator, and Viewer. Below this, you’ll see all the existing administrators for your profile, along with the roles assigned to each. Check out this article for more information about managing administrator accounts and roles. In the Roles Overview section, click on Details within a specific role to show the functionality available for that role. In the dialogue box th
To access all admin account management functions, navigate to the Account Settings menu using the left sidebar. This will open the Administrators account management page. At the top, you can see a quick overview of the different permission levels available for administrators, followed by a list of your organization’s existing administrators. Learn more about each role here.Note that the functions listed below are only available to existing profile administrators with the Manager role designation. If you would like to add, remove, or update roles for yourself or other admins in your organization, contact your profile’s Manager. Adding New Administrators To add a new administrator, click the Add Admin button. Fill in the user’s name and email address, and then select an appropriate role. Confirm by clicking the green Add New Admin button. You’ll see a note indicating that the addition was successful, and the new admin will appear in your list of administrative accounts.Note: Polco profi
Dear community members age [55 and up -- adjust to minimum age of sample], We need your input! The [City / County / State / Area Agency on Aging / State Agency on Aging] is conducting the Community Assessment Survey for Older Adults to better understand the contributions that adults [55+] make to their communities, as well as the needs they have and challenges they experience. Your feedback will help us be sure that our policies and programs align with our residents’ values. You can find the survey here: polco.us/[shorturl]. We encourage all residents age [55] and up to participate! The survey will only take 10-15 minutes to complete, and your feedback will directly influence the decisions and plans of local government, foundations, AAAs, nonprofits serving the aging population, and other organizations serving our community. If you have any questions about the survey, please contact [name] at [phone] or [email]. This survey is conducted in partnership with Polco, an online civic engag
Let your community know that you’re launching The Community Assessment Survey for Older Adults (CASOA)! We’ve created the templates below to help you spread the word about the initial survey launch and prepare residents who may be randomly selected to participate. Sharing the news on social media can help boost participation rates by assuring residents that those mailings are part of a legitimate survey effort from their local leaders, and that you value their input. We recommend posting a different message for the first few weeks that the survey is open, to reach residents as survey invitations are landing in their mailboxes. These suggested posts are optimized for platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Nextdoor. Simply replace the bracketed text with the right information for your community or organization, then copy and paste into your social media platform. To help increase your reach, encourage staff, councilmembers, community partners, and local news outlets to “like” and “sha
Sometimes, despite your best outreach efforts, your raw survey results will not be fully representative of your entire community. For example, we often tend to see higher rates of participation from individuals within certain demographic groups (e.g., older adults, homeowners, women) and lower response rates from others (e.g., younger adults, renters, men).Together, Polco’s representivity visualizations and automatic weighting functionality help address this issue. Our representivity graphs help you visualize the reach of an active survey and adjust outreach as needed to bring more people into the conversation. In addition, automatic weighting will regularly adjust the survey results to amplify the voices of underrepresented residents and provide more representative data overall. The automatic weighting functionality can be toggled on for each individual survey on the Summary tab. Although some respondent demographic data is gathered from voter registration records, most comes from re
Let your community know that you’re launching The National Community Survey (The NCS)! We’ve created the templates below to help you spread the word about the initial survey launch and prepare residents who may be randomly selected to participate. Sharing the news on social media can help boost participation rates by assuring residents that those mailings are part of a legitimate survey effort from their local leaders, and that you value their input. We recommend posting a different message for the first few weeks that the survey is open, to reach residents as survey invitations are landing in their mailboxes. These suggested posts are optimized for platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Nextdoor. Simply fill in the blanks to personalize the text for your community or organization, then copy and paste into your social media platform. To help increase your reach, encourage staff, councilmembers, community partners, and local news outlets to “like” and “share” your social media posts
Streamline your processes by having all your resident engagement in one place. To transition subscribers from another engagement platform to Polco, follow these steps: Download a list of subscribers, residents, or registered users from your other engagement platform. You may be able to do this on your own, or you may need to ask the platform to give you a list. Once you have the list of emails, import them into Polco as an email list. Send an email through Polco to these individuals, inviting them to provide input through Polco and subscribe to be notified about future engagement opportunities. Sample email script:“Hello, resident! The XYZ (City, Town, County) of ABC (Insert City/Town/County Name here) is transitioning from [other engagement platform] to Polco for ongoing community engagement. We value your opinions and want to make it easier for you to share input on important issues in our community. Please help us make better, more informed decisions by engaging with us on Po
Quick question does Polco have a QR code option for surveys?
Many municipalities used our Community Equity and Inclusion (CEI) survey to gather feedback from their residents. What steps are you planning to take after your initial CEI survey?
Can I determine the order that respondents will see polls in a poll set? For example, say that I created five polls (questions) in a poll set. Will respondents see them in a random order (different for every respondent) or can I set the order so respondents see the questions in a certain order?
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