Above: The Town is promoting a new survey on the the previously proposed school building project and potential future votes. (images cropped from Town and survey websites)
Updated (7/29/25 3:18 pm): The Town reached out to ask me to alert readers that Southborough seniors can get technical assistance to access the online survey! A computer has been setup at the Southborough Senior Center and someone will be available on weekdays from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm to aid those who need help or don’t have access to technology.
I’ll also point out that if you aren’t a senior and don’t have access to the internet, you can also use the computers at the Southborough Library during their regular hours.
The Town is seeking information to help them determine their next steps for a Southborough public school building project. The Select Board and School Committee are asking all voters to take a couple of minutes to answer the “PreK-8 School Building Survey”.
The survey intro refers to the failed votes in May on the proposed Neary Building Project. It explains the need for the Town to understand perspectives to guide next steps:
Our goal is to hear from all viewpoints, so please provide your open and honest opinions. All responses are anonymous. You’ll only be asked questions that are relevant to your experience. Your input—no matter your position—will help improve planning and communication going forward.
The survey seeks to learn how aware of voters were about details, what their information sources were, how they voted, details that influenced their vote, opinions about potential building projects, etc.
To participate, click here.
Does anyone know whether they are going to conduct a random sampling in addition to targeting specific populations, like those who go to the Senior Center and/or visit MySouthborough,com? Lacking a random sample undermines the integrity of the survey.
The survey is not based on a random sample. Doing so would be significantly more complex and expensive. There is an effort to alert as many potential respondents as practical. This includes posts on this blog, a mailing to seniors to cover those who might not have access to the internet, posting on Facebook and email chains to various groups.
There is a legitimate concern about the “What if one group is over represented response?” issue. There are some techniques to compensate for this type of bias. We can apply weights to various sub groups. For example, we have good data on the age distribution of the towns population from various census sources. We can divide the responses into corresponding age brackets and weight the responses for each group by their share of the overall population based on the census data.
We can do the same sort of analysis based on Voter/Non voter, Town Meeting Attending/Non Attending, Yes Voter/No Voter, and other attributes.
No survey is perfect. This is just a data point in the process.
Every individual in the Community should have an equal chance of participating in the survey. If that doesn’t happen, the results are, of course, biased. The outreach effort is appreciated, and may help balance things out a bit, but it does not eliminate the issue of biased results. I recall a member of a Committee suggesting recruiting participants at the Southborough Library; but I seldom visit our library because there are others that are more convenient. I guess I’m fortunate to be a reader of MySouthborough so that i even know aobut the survey! (As an individual formerly involved in National-level surveys of Children with Special Health Care Needs, I appreciate the importance of having the participants randomly selected. This can be accomplished by a mailing to random addresses in the Community).
Al, do we know how much it would cost to put a flyer about in every mailbox in town? That’s just out of curiosity.
FWIW I thought this was a well designed survey and I’m curious to see the results. I do hope we can reach as many people in town as possible. As Al said, correcting for over or under-representation of different demos in town will be important but provided enough people respond overall should be doable. So I would personally encourage everybody in town (including all adults in a household!) to take the time and consider the questions. It’s not short but it’s not verbose or overly drawn out either.
Having data like this is the way that we avoid making decisions based on the loudest voices in the room. I applaud the committee and the select board for going down this path.
the Worcester county data on students in Worcester county show drops as high as 25% in certain towns over the past 10 years. The Worcester telegram newspaper did the story this week. We need to be very careful to not ignore student enrollment trends. Fewer students does NOT mean we need more desks for students who are no longer showing up. It is very important that the voters insist on accurate enrollment numbers broken down to include Southborough residents, residents from other towns, immigrants in hotels going to our school’s short term. These facts will help all citizens make better and smarter decisions.