WS - E - Conducting Community Surveys

Analyzing and interpreting survey results Analyzing and interpreting survey results is a step of survey research that makes many lay persons panic. To help ease the pain of analysis, the CVS has developed some canned analysis packages to report survey findings. Frequencies and crosstabulations Frequencies report how many persons (and what percent of respondents) responded a certain way to each question in the survey. This is the most basic output from surveys and is a step taken by every survey analyst. For some folks, this may even be the last piece of analysis done on the survey findings! The following table is a frequency table reporting citizen attitudes about drug problems. Concerns about drugs Agree Neutral Disagree Total Drug sales and use in my 61.02% 23.73% 15.25% 100% neighborhood are problems (288) (112) (72) (472) The numbers in the table show the rare situation in which all respondents answered the question. Typically, in a survey with many respondents, each question will have at least a few respondents who do not answer. The number of non-responses is often shown separately, particularly if it is large, and the percents are of the people who did answer the question. While this type of table is interesting, frequencies are most useful for pointing to directions for further analysis. Wouldn't it be useful to know what kinds of citizens are most concerned about drug problems? Crosstabulations compare categories of responses on a particular characteristic. Demographic characteristics frequently influence the way results are interpreted. Concerns about drugs, by age of respondent Drug sales and use in my neighborhood are problems Agree Neutral Disagree Total Age 18-29 21% 18% 61% 100% (30) (26) (87) (143) Age 30-59 43% 21% 36% 100% (74) (36) (62) (172) Age 60 or older 80% 11% 9% 100% (126) (17) (14) (157) Totals 100% 100% 100% 100% (288) (112) (72) (472) Conducting Community Surveys 19