This is a Web version of (pubic domain) research sponsored by Paul Butcher, Director of the Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation Department of Colorado Springs, CO. Research was carried out by Dr. Robert Ewell of Creative Solutions. Each statement of the original report is supported by data illustrated by graphs which are available in this Web report via links for the introductory section only. The 20 graphs in the body of the report are omitted in this Web version. To obtain a hard copy of this research, fill in the comment section at the end of this report. Please visit the Creative Solutions Web site to obtain more information on Dr. Ewell's services.
From May through August 1995, a telephone survey was conducted from a randomly selected group of Colorado Springs residents. The survey was designed to measure the perceptions of Colorado Springs residents on various aspects of Parks and Recreation Department services as well as elicit public opinion on current issues. Parts of the survey were constructed to replicate a 1992 national study called The Benefits of Local Recreation and Park Services: A Nationwide Study of the Perceptions of the American Public by Geoffrey Godbey, Alan Graefe and Stephen W. James of Pennsylvania State University. The replication allowed comparison of the opinions of Colorado Springs residents with the American public as a whole.
This report will cover all the details of how the survey was conducted and analyzed together with all findings including how and when demographic subgroups responded differently. This introductory section highlights a few important findings.
Colorado Springs residents use parks more than the national average and perceive more benefits to themselves, their families, and their community than does the American public at large.
Colorado Springs residents rank their city services very close to the national average except in street maintenance.
Colorado Springs residents were overwhelmingly willing to pay the average per person tax rate of $35 per year.
Most Colorado Springs residents want Parks and Recreation Department services to be funded by some combination of taxes and fees .
When briefed on the proposed (now adopted) fee structure for Parks and Recreation Department activities, residents generally agreed with the concept that youth sports as a "merit" good should have fees set to recover "direct" costs only, receiving tax support for the balance. They also generally agreed that adult sports as "private" goods would move more toward being self-supporting with fees covering "direct/indirect" costs or "enterprise" costs.
Residents generally were not in favor of differential fees except for age and income (seniors and poor pay less).
Survey design and research methodology
Overall findings and comparison with national study
The Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation Department Public Opinion Survey was designed and carried out by Dr. Bob Ewell of the local consulting firm, Creative Solutions. Dr. Ewell has worked with the Department since the Fall of 1994 on a variety of issues including analyzing an informal survey of participants of Parks and Recreation Department programs, assessing the department's management environment and employee satisfaction, and helping formulate and communicate a fees and charges policy.
Parks and Recreation Department director Paul Butcher felt it would be wise to localize the findings of the Penn State study in order to best meet the needs of the community as well as document the public's perception of Parks and Recreation program benefits. Therefore, questions for this study were developed to match the Penn State study as closely as possible with local items of interest added. The one specific that was changed had to do with the per person share of taxes for parks and recreation programs. The national study used $45.00; we used $35.00, a figure derived from taking the $12 million Parks and Recreation Department budget and dividing by the approximately 350,000 Colorado Springs residents. This Colorado Springs study was integrated with a concurrent effort to establish a new fees and charges policy, and additional questions were added to assess public opinion on that issue. The survey also included an assessment of the ViewFinder, a Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation Department information insert in the local newspaper, the Gazette Telegraph (GT). Please see the text of the survey in the Appendix.
To facilitate both administration and data reduction, the survey was built into custom software which presented questions to the interviewer who typed in the responses of the interviewees. The interviews were conducted over a two-month period in July and August by interviewers selected and trained by Dr. Ewell.
Persons to be interviewed were selected randomly by zip code. Using a computerized telephone book and an auxiliary randomization program developed by Creative Solutions, several hundred names were selected at random from each of the Colorado Springs zip codes. Then targets for each zip code were selected as a proportion of the number of phone numbers in that zip code. As the interviewers worked through their calling lists, their progress was monitored and they were assigned zip codes to call to keep the balance among the areas.
In addition to the randomly selected telephone respondents, the surveys were administered in written form at three Parks and Recreation Department focus groups and two public hearings. An additional 50 surveys were picked up from these sources. It is recognized that these 50 were not necessarily random since they were a self-selected sample, some with specific interest in various aspects of Parks and Recreation Department programs. However, the sources of data were carefully monitored throughout the analysis, and the conclusion is that including the extra 50 respondents added to the data base without significantly biasing the numbers. The only exception was "Participation in activities" where these 50 had much higher percentages and were left out of the percent reported.
Data were then read directly into Microsoft Excel where they were formatted and then exported into the statistical package Statistical Processing for the Social Sciences. With SPSS, Dr. Ewell was able not only to summarize the data but also to analyze the responses demographically. In the third section of the report, significant differences among demographic subgroups are reported where they occur.
The 250+ randomly selected respondents (or the 300+ total respondents) translate statistically into a margin of error of about 5 percent: we are 90 percent confident that the true proportion of the population responding positively to a yes/no question is within 5 percent of the sample proportion. Where averages are reported, the true averages will be within about +0.1 of the sample average.
The following chart shows that more Colorado Springs residents reported themselves with more time for recreation and leisure than the national average.
About 35 percent of Colorado Springs residents participated in at least one Parks and Recreation Department sponsored activity within the last 12 months--slightly higher than the national average. The percentage of respondents that had not participated in the last 12 months but had participated at some time in their life was about the same locally and nationally.
When given some options as to why they had not participated, Colorado Springs non-participants mainly chalked it up to no time--something the Parks and Recreation Department can't do much about except, perhaps change the schedule. Factors for Parks action, however, could include "Not enough information" and "Not planned for people like me." "Too expensive" is generally a non reason as it was in the national survey. Generally, Colorado Springs percentages matched the relative balance of the national survey except that Colorado Springs was lower in every category but "Too expensive."
Colorado Springs residents and their families tend to use parks more than the national average (as mentioned in the introduction).
Colorado Springs residents also tend to see higher benefits to parks than the national average at all levels: personal, family, and community.
Colorado Springs residents tend to rate their city services at about the same level as the American public at large. The only exception is street maintenance where Colorado Springs comes in a little lower.
This concludes the findings of the Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation Department Public Opinion Survey, 1995, modeled after the 1992 national study, The Benefits of Local Recreation and Park Services: A Nationwide Study of the Perceptions of the American Public. Some key findings include:
- Colorado Springs residents use parks more than the national average and perceive more benefits to themselves, their families, and their community than does the American public at large.
- More Colorado Springs residents reported themselves with more time for recreation and leisure than the national average.
- Colorado Springs residents rank their city services very close to the national average except in street maintenance.
- Colorado Springs residents were overwhelmingly willing to pay the average per person tax rate of $35 per year.
- Most Colorado Springs residents want Parks and Recreation Department services to be funded by some combination of taxes and fees.
- When briefed on the proposed (now adopted) fee structure for Parks and Recreation Department activities, residents generally agreed with the concept that youth sports as a "merit" good should have fees set to recover "direct" costs only, receiving tax support for the balance. They also generally agreed that adult sports as "private" goods would move more toward being self-supporting with fees covering "direct/indirect" costs or "enterprise" costs.
- Residents generally were not in favor of differential fees except for age and income (seniors and poor pay less).
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