NRP to launch new public survey

Telephone survey scientifically designed to gauge public view of NRP

The Niagara Regional Police services board is conducting a telephone survey to gauge public opinion about policing, safety and crime to help frame its next business plan.

Unlike the last survey — conducted in 2015 by the firm owned by current Niagara Region CAO Carmen D’Angelo — the project is a scientific undertaking crafted with direct input from the NPR’s statistical analysis expert.

The content for the new 22question survey was approved Thursday at a police board business plan committee meeting.

“Hopefully, that will happen in the next few weeks,” said committee co-chair and board member Vaughn Stewart. “When the survey is done, historically, we are looking for at least 1,000 respondents. That might mean the company will have to make 5,000 calls.”

The survey will also solicit responses proportionally across Niagara, he said.

Stewart said the survey was initially designed by himself, Deputy Chief Bill Fordy and NRP corporate analyst Paul Divers.

The services board later provided further input that was incorporated into the survey.

Stewart said the questions are designed to avoid leading someone to a preferred answer. The questions are short and direct, rather than being prefaced by preambles that could push respondents in a particular direction.

“You have to be careful, and we had this discussion with the board, about how you ask questions,” he said. “If you ask, for example, do you pay too much on your tax bill, most people will say ’yes’. And that would be the same for your cell bill, or water bill ... it’s human nature. People want to pay less.”

The survey returns to the method the NRP used to conduct public surveys. In 2015 the board, under the leadership of chairman Bob Gale, departed from past practice to avoid asking what Gale called “vanilla questions.”

The board hired D’Angelo, then the CAO of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, who put together an unscientific online survey through his company DPM Consulting. Gale praised the survey, but its methodological problems — including an inability to filter out fake or duplicate responses — was exposed publicly by The Standard and Stewart, who took

the survey 22 times.

The survey questions also featured long preambles and sometimes the answers did not fit the questions being asked.

Ultimately, the $25,000 survey was given little weight in the business plan developed that year. D’Angelo wrote a letter to Gale claiming that “libellous editorials” in the newspaper were having a deleterious impact on the survey’s credibility. He told the board he would forgo his fee to complete the survey and only bill the board for $9,000 of work done by his son Joseph D’Angelo.

Gale did not respond to an interview request from The Standard.

Stewart said in addition to the new survey, the NRP will hold stakeholders meetings.