National citizen survey seeks opinions from Dover residents

posted on 6/1/2023

The City of Dover has released its biannual National Community Survey, and Dover residents are encouraged to participate to help the city measure service performance and quality and assess community needs.

"Participation in the survey is crucial as it serves as a guide for decision-making that shapes the future of our city," said City Manager J. Michael Joyal, Jr. "I urge all Dover residents to take a few moments and complete the anonymous survey, and share your valuable insights."

The community survey results, combined with other feedback, help the City Council, various city boards and commissions, and the city administration understand and respond appropriately to the community’s needs in the upcoming years and make comparisons to other peer cities. The questions focus on community livability, quality of life, local policies, rating of local government services, and resident use of services.

The online survey can be accessed here: https://polco.us/dover2023op. Randomly selected residents were mailed in May either a physical copy of the survey or a postcard that directed recipients to an online survey via a private link. If you received the survey's paper version or a private online survey link, please complete those versions instead.

Survey results will be available after the survey concludes on June 16, 2023.

Survey participants must provide an email address and zip code to submit responses, automatically creating an account. However, all survey responses are anonymous and are not linked to an email address. Polco uses the email and zip code to verify residency and to ensure one survey response per person. Participants can verify their residency by submitting their names and zip code to provide the most accurate and reliable data. Users always remain anonymous, and Polco never shares this information with the city or anyone else. This step is optional but can make input even more meaningful; responses from verified residents are included in a separate set of results and are often treated as more reliable than overall results. See Polco's privacy policy here: https://info.polco.us/your-privacy.

The city contracted with National Research Center at Polco to participate in the 2023 National Community Survey. This instrument was developed in partnership with the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) in 2001 to provide cities with a low-cost, high-quality method to conduct market research.

The National Citizen Survey (NCS) was among the first scientific surveys developed to gather resident opinions on various community issues and has been used in more than 350 jurisdictions across 46 states. The NCS is a high-quality, cost-effective scientific resident opinion survey and an important benchmarking tool that compares communities. Communities using The NCS have reported the survey tool has helped improve performance, strengthen communications with community stakeholders, and identify clear priorities for use in goal and budget setting.