By Igor Studenkov | Bugle Staff
nweditor@buglenewspapers.com
@NilesILNews
The village of Niles is hoping residents will share feedback about village services through a community survey.
The project started out as a collaboration between the village and University of Illinois at Chicago graduate school students. The survey went up on Niles’ official website in March, and it was supposed to be there until April 11. But it got far fewer responses than the village hoped, so the village put the survey up again – and decided to make a paper copy available, as well.
According to Hayley Garard, communications and multimedia coordinator for the village, the survey started out as a project by graduate students from UIC’s Department of Public Administration. As part of their capstone course, they must work with a municipal, public or non-profit organization to analyze an organizational or policy problem.
Garard told the Bugle that the village was hoping to get about 1,000 responses – enough for the results to be statistically significant. But because the students had to present their report before the end of the semester, there was only so long the survey could stay up. By the time the survey closed in April 11, it only managed to get around 200 responses.
But the village saw no reason not to resume the survey once the students had a chance to collect data. Garard said that they will keep it up on the website until they reach their goal.
“Hopefully, it will allow us to reach more people,” said Hadley Skeffington-Vos, assistant village manager. “Once we get enough feedback, we’ll close the survey and the [village] staff will do the analysis.”
The survey is currently available online, at www.surveymonkey.com/r/nilessurvey. Residents can also pick it up in paper form at the Niles Village Hall, Niles Senior Center, Niles Family Fitness Center and the Niles Public Library. Staff will also hand out paper surveys at Bike Niles Fest and other village events.
The village is also working with UIC to create an employee survey. During the April 20 Niles General Government/IT Commitee meeting, Skeffington-Vos explained that it will be done during the summer by Chinese students who were studying at the university on a foreign exchange program.
“They’ll start toward the end of May, and they’ll have 12 weeks,” she said. “This is an opportunity that has been cut from the past [budgets].”
Village trustee George Alpogianis, who chairs the committee, had one quibble with the employee survey.
“I don’t think anonymous [surveys] are a good idea, because people will start bashing just to bash,” he said. “I think, if they have ideas, they should put their names on them.”
Bill Shaw, the committee member and Niles IT Director, said that while having employees put names on the survey may not be a problem, having the administration known them might not be a good idea.
“Perhaps UIC will combine the answers into a final summary, and [the survey] will have anonymity as far as we know,” he said.