What Do Piquonians Think?
Vol. III, No. 128 - A look at our Community Survey results for Piqua
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For over two years, this publication has conducted reader surveys every other month; these results present a nuanced picture of civic engagement, awareness, and optimism within our community. And while we have always welcomed responses from communities other from Troy, the response hasn’t always been there.
Except September was a marked change — we had 55 respondents from the City of Piqua. That was an amazing response from our requests to have people spend a few minutes to fill out this survey and it shows the reach of this publication. People throughout Miami County are becoming more interested in the decisions made in their hometown and are willing to share their thoughts!
Where are we headed?
In terms of the data, 45% of our readers in Piqua believe the nation is on the right track, which is 14 percent higher than the number recorded by our Troy respondents. In addition, 36% of respondents felt the nation is headed in the wrong direction. Residents have a dimmer outlook when it comes to the State of Ohio; 25% think the state is heading in the right direction, which is still higher than the 18% of Troy residents who believe the same, while 41% believe the state is headed in the wrong direction; 32% are unsure.
When it comes to the City of Piqua, the picture is dismal. September’s survey shows that 75% of respondents believe Piqua is headed in the wrong direction and 13% of respondents believed that the community is headed in the right direction. Of note, 13% of respondents were unsure of the community’s direction.
Civic Awareness and Hope for the Future
Awareness levels about civic issues show a strong majority of residents who keep aware of civic issues. 22% of respondents are extremely aware and 48% are aware, which are actually higher numbers that were reported in Troy’s survey.
Confidence in positive changes within the hometown shows a very pessimistic outlook. 20% of respondents were do not expect to see any changes over the next year. 58% of respondents are either not confident or somewhat not confident that things will improve. 22% 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. 29% of respondents love their community, and another 36% of respondents like their community and 23% expressed no emotional attachment to the community. Alarmingly, 11% showed some dislike about Piqua.
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 September survey, with the 55 respondents that participated, this survey has a 13% 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:
Nearly two-thirds (62%) of our respondents were over age 65. Nearly one in three (32%) were between 45-64. Three respondents tath were under age 35 responded to our survey.
For those that answered, most of our respondents were female (62%).
83% of our respondents are long time residents, stating they have lived in Piqua for more than 20 years. Another 9% of respondents have lived in Piqua for 10–20 years. 8% of respondents reported living in town less than 10 years.
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A New Handbook to grow Civic Capacity!
Recently, we created a new digital handbook, “The Citizen’s Guide to Public Records”. This handbook is designed to help residents have a better understanding of public meetings and meeting records. It’s filled with templates, ideas and other information that will open a new world of public affairs.
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Thank you to our New Media Partners!
Recently, many of our stories has been showing up on the local news website, www.mymiamicounty.com. We are grateful for the good folks for sharing our work with their audience and we would encourage our readers to check them out at their website!
Our publication would also like to recognize the good work being done at www.piquanewsnow.com. Piqua News Now is a new web-based news and information site for the Miami County area, with a specific focus on Piqua!
In addition, the good folks at Piqua News Now have started a new, 24-hour streaming YouTube channel. This channel is awesome with continuous weather updates and more importanly, it provides a 24-hour audio feed from county wide dispatch. Check it out here!
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Very interesting survey