High participation rate for Motueka 2030 programme

June 8th, 2015

Organisers are pleased with the number of people who engaged in one way or another in the Motueka 2030 programme run throughout May.

A report on activity during the month has concluded that at least 1000 people took part - either on Facebook, by filling in the questionnaire, doing a SWOT analysis or attending one of the seven events that ran through the month.

Vision Motueka says many people did more than one of these, so the final estimate is quite conservative, but anything over 1000 people - in an adult population of around 5000 - indicates that the public consultation programme represents a good sampling of the opinions and ideas of Motueka people.

"I think we can take these results as statistically reliable, certainly around issues and ideas that showed clear preferences," says a Vision Motueka spokesman.

"Certainly it gives us all, as members of this community, a good steer on what we mostly want and don't want. And given the amount of publicity we had online and in the media, most people in the town at least knew about it and had the opportunity to take part."

One of the busiest activities was the Motueka 2030 Facebook Group page. Set up one week before the start of May, it ended the month with 550 members and is still growing.

Many of the members were "watchers", neither contributing (through comments) nor 'liking' posts, but the number of people who wrote relevant comments at least once on this page was 123, the report says.

About one half of these commented on several occasions, and about 25 were what was called "serial commenters". All the comments provided to the various questions and issues raised have been captured and will go into the final public report.

The main 45-item questionnaire came in two forms - a paper version that was available at a table outside the museum during May, and an online version using the popular polling software Survey Monkey.

273 people filled in the paper version and 267 people did the online version, making a total of 540 people. Name checking suggests that there was no problem with double voting. (See the results of that questionnaire here.)

An alternative "quick questionnaire" was set up as a quick Yes/No alternative survey for those who didn't have time to do the full questionnaire.

It was run using both a paper version available at events and as the basis for "pebble voting" run three times, where people voted Yes or No to the 20 questions using pebbles in jars.

By adding the numbers of Yes's and No's for each question and looking for the greatest number (given that some people voted only on some questions), organisers believe that perhaps about 170 people took part, although some of them would also have done the full questionnaire.

Attempts were made to count the numbers of people attending the main events (the open day at Memorial Hall, the Economic Summit, the Youth Summit, the Maori Forum and the Sustainable Future meeting).

The sum of these was about 380. Given that several people attended more than one event, the most likely count of participation at events were estimated to be around 325.

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