Survey will help identify needs in Adams County

October 1, 2008

Kelly Wilson

The first community needs assessment in six years is being conducted by the Alliance for Building Community, and 3,000 Adams County households will receive surveys this week.

“You only really learn what is important, what’s working and what isn’t, when you ask people directly. And the more people we hear back from, the more reliable the information,” said Cheryl Waterman, executive director of the United Way of Adams County.

The United Way, the University of Illinois Extension and the Adams County Health Department are the founding partners of ABC, which is a community partnership of individuals and groups working to improve the quality of life for all county residents.

The partnership identifies the county’s challenges and works to find solutions. An up-to-date community needs assessment will help guide ABC’s work and set priorities.

“It will be interesting to see what kind of information comes back,” said Carrie Edgar, University of Illinois Extension county director. “This provides us with some direction. It will really help drive some of the community projects and efforts that are going on.”

The surveys are intentionally being sent to households, addressed to “Community Builder,” instead of to specific individuals.

“We want to reduce the number of surveys returned (unopened) because someone moved. By sending to an address, someone will get the survey and hopefully take a few minutes to complete and return it,” Edgar said.

The surveys will take about 15 minutes to complete.

“It’s about how people feel about their personal life, but also about their neighborhood and their community ... questions about work life, school life, home life, personal health, all of those things it takes to have a good quality of life,” Edgar said.

Returned surveys are anonymous and confidential with no way of identifying who completes them.

“We are very conscious of the need for people to feel secure,” said Julie Shepard, director of health promotion for the Adams County Health Department. “Many of the survey questions are of a sensitive nature and people need to feel they can answer with complete honesty. We hope to get a good response from the people who get this survey, but it’s equally important that the quality be as good as the quantity.”

The 3,000 households were chosen randomly from the almost 27,000 households in Adams County and apportioned by ZIP codes.

The survey eventually will be made available on the Internet for anyone in the county to complete. Information about access is expected to be provided in early November.

Students in Adams County schools, grades 7- 12, also will be given a chance to provide their opinions.

Once information is collected through these various efforts, it will be analyzed and compiled into a summary report that will be presented in a public gathering in March 2009.

For more information about the survey process, call Earl Bricker at 740-7107 or e-mail dbricker@illinois.edu. For more information, go to www.allianceforbuildingcommunity.org or call Laura Hyde at 223-8380.