Crawford County commissioners authorize postcard mailer, agree to anonymous online survey to boost participation

Crawford County commissioners on Feb. 6 authorized a postcard mailer and asked the county clerk or treasurer to provide a mailing list to support a countywide comprehensive-plan survey, after hearing a detailed presentation on survey design, anonymity and data-integrity safeguards.

The survey consultant, Joshua Calvin, told the commission that requiring respondents to enter names and email addresses on the questionnaire would likely reduce participation "by at least a 50 to 70%" and recommended publishing the survey without name and email fields while capturing identifying data on the back end through IP and other analytics. "But I believe for the best participation in the survey that we should leave the name and email address off of the actual survey itself and allow it to be tracked through IP addresses," Calvin said.

Calvin and county officials said the goal is to maximize participation on polarizing topics such as zoning, wind and solar development while preserving the ability to detect duplicate or automated responses. He explained SurveyMonkey tools and additional analytic checks — including IP-geosyncing, comment-text comparison and manual review of flagged responses — to limit fraud and overlap between mailed, paper and online returns. Calvin said paper copies will be available at county buildings, city halls and…