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To realize the hope of true statistical validity from a survey, any student of this method of gaining defensible results from a survey knows that as much time is spent on formulating the sample to be surveyed as on the content (questions) of the survey itself. To simply throw the survey out to the public through an online approach, asking any and all to respond, compromises the required control of the sample and forever prohibits any ability of Lake Pend Oreille School District to use the results claiming that true “public input” has been attained.

The “public’ in this case is obviously limited to those who are comfortable with the internet, own or have access to computers, and may have a pre-determined bias leading them to take the time to respond to the survey, once or many times. That is a far cry from a truly provable random sampling wherein a broad spectrum of citizens from every economic, educational, age, family status, gender, working versus unemployed, and many additional factors were considered and included in the structure of the sample.

The population of the respondents to the survey may represent the voting citizenry of the district but there will be absolutely no way to determine that, much less prove it so that the results can be defensibly used. This is sad because Shawn Woodward and school board are trying to do the right thing and could have accomplished that with a bit more time spent on the front end of this implementation of the survey approach to gain the insight they are looking for.

STAN HATCH, PhD

Sandpoint