Our Community Survey: March Results
Over 60% of Our Respondents Say Troy is Headed in the Wrong Direction
Here in Troy, the sentiments of our community towards the nation, state, and local governance provide a revealing glimpse into the collective mind of our tight-knit community. For a number of months, this publication has conducted reader surveys at different intervals; these results present a nuanced picture of civic engagement, awareness, and optimism within our community.
Where are we headed?
As of this survey, a growing number of residents believe the nation is on the right track, with 16% expressing positive sentiments, down from 31% two months ago. This contrasts sharply with those who think the state is heading in the right direction, which showed improvement from 14% to 23% over the same period.
The percentage of individuals that are not optimistic about our community’s direction continues to grow. In our March survey, 63% of respondents believe our community is headed in the wrong direction, up from 58% in January and up from 34% last July. Of note, 21% of respondents were unsure of the community’s direction, whereas only 16% of respondents felt our community was headed in the right direction — the lowest mark in five surveys.
Civic Awareness and Hope for the Future
Awareness levels about civic issues show a significant increase in those who are extremely aware, improving from 18% to 30%, suggesting a possible trend towards more civic engagement, which happens to be the overriding goal of this publication.
Confidence in positive changes within the hometown shows nearly a balanced picture. 30% of respondents were do not expect to see any changes. 34% of respondents are either not confident or somewhat not confident that things will improve. 36% of respondents are confident or somewhat confident that things will improve.
The survey also asked about the respondents’ emotional connection to the community, and the answers continue to a strong emotional attachment to the community. 53% of respondents love their community, and another 40% of respondents like their community. 5% expressed no emotional attachment to the community and 2% show dislike towards the hometown.
Open Ended Questions and Answers
The survey also asked residents to provide answers to open-ended questions on what they believed to be the most positive attributes in the community and some of the biggest challenges facing the community. The responses were pooled into word clouds which shows the relative strength of the answers provided.
Attributes
Challenges
For the January survey, 64 respondents participated, and the survey has a 12% margin of error at a 95% confidence level.
A Note on Demographics
As part of this survey, we asked demographic questions of our those that were wiling to answer those questions. Here are some demographic highlights of those that completed this survey:
Over half of our respondents (53%) were over age 65. One in five respondents (20%) were aged 55-64.
Most of our respondents were female (59%).
Over three-quarters of our respondents (77%) were long time residents, stating they have lived in Troy for more than 20 years. Another 14% of respondents have lived in Troy for 10–20 years.
Note on Other Communities
The data provided above were specifically for Troy, even though this survey received data from other communities as well, including Piqua (7 respondents), Tipp City (1 respondent), Huber Heights (1 respondent), and Casstown (1 respondent).
If we receive more data from these communities in the future, we will analyze that data as well, however the numbers are simply too small to make the data valuable in any statistical sense.
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