My recent survey asked:

If you’re a resident, what do you see as the most important issues in York at the moment?

And here are the answers left in response:

Survey responses, question 4

Make interesting reading, don’t they.

I’ve pulled out a few of the comments I found most striking.

… Creating a connection between people and their city, a sense of ownership – York doesn’t belong to those easily-labelled groups that dominate the news and the political agenda (‘motorists’, ‘tourists’ etc) but to everyone.

… would prefer redevelopment of existing sites to further expansion of York’s boundaries, and a long-term vision for York rather than short-sighted political opportunism.

… I know tourism is a major revenue earner for the city (especially in the context of government cuts and loss of traditional industries) – but there is a risk of the city being changed to meet the requirements of visitors rather than to serve its residents.

The post Survey responses: most important issues for York? appeared first on York Stories.

The majority (65.38%) of responses came from people resident in York (within City of York council boundaries, includes some villages outside of York).

25% were former residents (many of the people on my mailing list are former residents).

The remaining 9.62% were people who regularly visit the city.

Most of the people who completed the survey were in the over 30 age group. Only 3.77% were under 30.

The highest percentage (26.42%) were in my own (40-49) age group, closely followed by 24.53% in the 50-59 age range and also 24.53% in the ’60 or older’. (I didn’t particularly like that rather broad category but it was one of the standard formats the survey offered.) 20.75% of respondents were in the 30-39 age group.

I’m not going to attempt analysis of this, just want to say that of course there are people in the under-20 age group visiting the site (the graph above shows none) but perhaps they’re less likely to fill in online surveys.

Responses to: ‘why do you visit this website’. I wish I’d offered more options/suggestions for this (including perhaps ‘to see things you’ve found in your understairs cupboard ephemera archive’, as I seem to be including that kind of thing a fair bit recently.)

90.20% of respondents visit for information on changes in York – not surprising, as the subtitle of this website is ‘York and its changes from a resident’s perspective’.

What did surprise me, and I find it very interesting, is that the next most popular reason for visiting was to read ‘opinion on local controversies (eg King’s Square, Lendal Bridge)': 70.59%

There was an ‘other’ option on this question too, but it can’t be turned into a graph as it was a text box for comment. Some of the comments from this and a later similar question on the survey are on a separate page, where I collected them together as they were so good to read and made the ten years of online work seem worthwhile. Thank you. I appreciated your considered thoughts and your kind words.

Publicising the survey

The first two responses were from people who had seen the survey posted on the website before it was mentioned anywhere else. I then advertised its existence on Twitter, and this brought more responses fairly rapidly. A newsletter mailing to my mailing list resulted in many more.

I mentioned it on Twitter several times after that. It wasn’t advertised on Facebook – at least I didn’t advertise it there as I don’t use Facebook. Two people whose views I was interested in I contacted individually, one responded.

The number of responses stuck at 49 for a while, so I mentioned it again on Twitter in the hope of getting to a nice round 50, and in the end had 53.

Names and anonymity

The response to the ‘Name’ box was interesting. I didn’t make it compulsory, because I know that ‘anon’ can often speak the truth and that being ‘anon’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Though it was noticeable that the majority of responses did include a full name.

38 of the 53 responses included a full name, or Twitter name, or online identity I’d recognise (eg distinctive first name which was recognisable to me from comments on the site/email/Twitter correspondence). Of the other respondents, the ‘anons': 8 left a first name, 1 respondent included a first name and place (‘from Poland’), 1 left initials, 1 apologised and said he/she never gave a name on online surveys, and 4 people left the box blank.

. . . . .

So, that’s the context and some info on who responded. What did people say?

There were definite trends/repeated concerns, and some interesting observations. More soon.

The post Survey responses … part 1 appeared first on York Stories.

It’s some days now since I left us on an imaginary charabanc journey. I’m not able to add much to the site at the moment for various reasons, but I’d appreciate it, dear readers, if you could peruse and add your views to a survey I’ve prepared.

It should be embedded below, or alternatively this link to the survey may be better optimised for small screens.

I hope to share some of your comments in a later article.

The post Survey: your thoughts please appeared first on York Stories.