Community Future Trends Survey September 2008

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Permalink Reply by Mark Hall on August 10, 2008 at 8:30am

Steve,

As part of the Madison County and Norfolk, NE, Visioning 2026 Project we developed a poll that covered the 5, 10 and 20 year periods with questions that had rating, ranking, and knowledge responses. These questions were mailed out to a random sampling of the county with a 15% response (some advertising really helped) (264 responses), high school juniors in 4 local high schools (used 37 random results from 120 responses), and an on-line poll using Survey Monkey (we helped with preselected volunteers using email groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, Visioning 2026 dialogue and focus group members)(130 responses). We used 431 responses for our analysis and reporting process step. We believe the results provided us with "adequate sampling data" to establish a basis to move forward with additional community development activities.

We started our polling question development by using Dr. Marv Cetron's trends and coming up with 56 trends we believed would impact our communities in the future. Dr Cetron then evaluated these trends and identified their respective impacts to our area. These trends were presented to the dialogue and focus group sessions which allowed us to take their responses and further refine our likely polling question candidates. The original list of 48 questions developed from 4 team members were consolidated or eliminated into 18 questions and then 10 demographic questions.

I've included both the polling questions as well as the 56 trends impacting our community.

Please take some time and review our Visioning 2026 Project website.

Please let me know if you have any more questions. Good luck with your process. I would like to have the opportunity to review your polling questions as some point so we can provide some feedback and use for our future efforts locally.

Mark

Attachments:

• Visioning2026PollingQuestions.pdf, 48 KB
• 56 TOP TRENDS AFFECTING NORFOLK Madison Co..pdf, 68 KB

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Permalink Reply by Stephen F. Steele on August 11, 2008 at 9:37am

Mark Hall said:

Steve,

As part of the Madison County and Norfolk, NE, Visioning 2026 Project we developed a poll that covered the 5, 10 and 20 year periods with questions that had rating, ranking, and knowledge responses. These questions were mailed out to a random sampling of the county with a 15% response (some advertising really helped) (264 responses), high school juniors in 4 local high schools (used 37 random results from 120 responses), and an on-line poll using Survey Monkey (we helped with preselected volunteers using email groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, Visioning 2026 dialogue and focus group members)(130 responses). We used 431 responses for our analysis and reporting process step. We believe the results provided us with "adequate sampling data" to establish a basis to move forward with additional community development activities.

We started our polling question development by using Dr. Marv Cetron's trends and coming up with 56 trends we believed would impact our communities in the future. Dr Cetron then evaluated these trends and identified their respective impacts to our area. These trends were presented to the dialogue and focus group sessions which allowed us to take their responses and further refine our likely polling question candidates. The original list of 48 questions developed from 4 team members were consolidated or eliminated into 18 questions and then 10 demographic questions.

I've included both the polling questions as well as the 56 trends impacting our community.

Please take some time and review our Visioning 2026 Project website.

Please let me know if you have any more questions. Good luck with your process. I would like to have the opportunity to review your polling questions as some point so we can provide some feedback and use for our future efforts locally.

Mark

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Permalink Reply by Stephen F. Steele on August 11, 2008 at 9:38am

Mark,
Exceptional... many thanks. May We feel free to use some of your items?

Thanks.

Steve

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Permalink Reply by Mark Hall on August 11, 2008 at 7:56pm

Stephen F. Steele said:

Mark,
Exceptional... many thanks. May We feel free to use some of your items? Thanks.

Steve

Yes, Steve please use whatever material you believe will help with your effort. The only thing we would ask is to reference our efforts somewhere in you project documentation. This material was developed by primarily volunteers.

Mark

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Permalink Reply by Bruce LaDuke on August 11, 2008 at 9:03pm

Steve,

I use this amalgamated and customized list of categories (I compiled from a variety of sources) as a futuring framework and try to understand the flow of trends in these categories from global to regional to local. You might be able to use these to help you formulate survey questions:

Economics
- Consumption
- Trade patterns
- Trade partners and alliances
- Structural change
- Wealth distribution
- Debt Level
- Taxation
- Employment/Unemployment
- Impact of globalization
- Contradictions
- Expansion/Development
- Integration
- Sectoral production
-- Technology
-- Science
-- Manufacturing
-- Retail
-- Wholesale

Education
- Skills readiness (upon workforce entry)
- Pertinence (of skills to demand)
- Volume (of graduates vs. demand)
- Level (demographics of graduates by level)

Technology
- Infrastructure
- Number of networked people
- Change capacity
- Technological literacy
- Technological divide
- Infrastructure
- Number of networked people
- Change capacity
- Privacy
- e-Security

Environment
- Sustainability
- Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels
- World forest area
- Fossil fuel usage
- Water resources
- Forest lands
- Carbon emissions (industrial, consumer)
- Alternative energy

Socio/Political
- Communities
- Life expectancy
- Literacy rate
- Democracy level
- Health Care
- Status of youth
- Status of women
- Health/Fitness
- Human equity/Diversity
- Crime
- Values (and changes in values)
- Physical security
- Power levels (local, state, region, nation, global)

Demographic
- Population levels and growth
- Fertility
- Infant Mortality
- Mortality/Aging/Life Expectancy
- Migration

Food and Agriculture
- Land use and production levels
- Calorie availability
- Malnutrition rates

Energy
- Resource and production levels
- Demand patterns
- Renewable energy share

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Permalink Reply by rick smyre on August 13, 2008 at 3:52pm

Steve...

Good way to seed futures thinking in a community. Two survey topics that I would suggest based on my work with economic developers are 1) culture that supports innovation....maybe a Likert scale question such as "Our community is open to new ideas" ...not important to very important;and
2) determine to what extent there is an understanding that there are different types of economies mixed together at this tranistion time in history....industrial economy, knowledge economy, creative molecular/open source economy.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen F. Steele on August 13, 2008 at 4:02pm

Bruce,
This list is exceptional... Thanks! ... allow me to share a set of "topics, tools and tasks" recommended by 25 futurists on five continents... on http://ola4.aacc.edu/soc/futurecourse/update041708.htm .. who responded to a request to brainstorm topics, tools and tasks that could be included in -

"A college undergraduate level, freshman/sophomore, first course on the future. This would be a general futures overview."

Best,
Steve

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Permalink Reply by Stephen F. Steele on August 13, 2008 at 4:09pm

Thanks, Rick...
Steve

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Permalink Reply by Mark Hall on August 29, 2008 at 10:41am

Ran across a 16 page document, "10 Principles for Sustainable City Governance", that may be helpful in providing background for participants involved in the survey.

Attachments:

• 10 Principles for Sustainable Cities.pdf, 2.7 MB

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