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A Study by Penn State University Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology |
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A Study by Penn State University Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology |
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To describe citizen opinion for the state as a whole, a random sample of households within the state would have sufficed. However, because the regions varied widely in population size, 75% of the sample members would have come from only three of the regions -- the Southeast (40%), the Southwest (22%), and the Capital Region (13%), while the Susquehanna, North Central, and South Central regions together would have accounted for only about 10% of the sample. To obtain enough cases to allow for generalizations to each of the eight regions, the sample was stratified, with at least 1000 cases drawn from each area. Anticipating greater heterogeneity in views and lower response rates in the more populous areas, slightly larger samples were drawn for these areas. For the Southeast Region, 1600 names were drawn; for the Southwest Region, 1200; and for the Capital Region, 1200. Since more than 95% of all Pennsylvania households were known to have telephones, names and addresses of potential subjects were selected from telephone listings within each region by a commercial sampling organization (Genesys Sampling Systems). Inputs from Cooperative Extension professionals, researchers, and administrators in the College, were compiled to arrive at the topics and issues to be addressed on the survey form. Included were general questions dealing with many of the issues dealt with in the 1980 and 1990 surveys, questions dealing with state-level issues related to economic development, environmental protection, images and evaluations of the subject’s local community, and It was decided to utilize machine readable (optical scan) forms to facilitate data compilation by reducing the time for data entry and minimizing clerical error in data file preparation. [2001 Survey] Questionnaires were mailed to 11,400 Pennsylvania residents in late October 2000, together with a cover letter requesting that an adult member of the household complete and return the survey form. A reminder post-card was mailed two weeks later. Contact with the subjects was suspended during the holiday season, but was renewed in 2001 with the mailing of a duplicate survey form and to all sample members who failed to respond to the earlier contacts. A total of 2,472 surveys were returned by the Post Office as “undeliverable.” Of the remaining 9,028, usable survey forms were returned by 4,183 subjects (a 46.3% response rate). Response rates varied by region -- from 52% in the North Central Region to 39% in the Southeast Region. To obtain estimates of the distributions of responses for the State as a whole, the regional samples were weighted in regard to the proportion of the total number of households in the state in each region.
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©2001 Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology |
