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There are a few points that should be
taken into account when reading Voices
from the Community: The visionPDX Input
Report. These relate
to how we organized the report, how we
treat quotations and how we use certain
terms.
Organization:
- This report is organized into nine
major issue areas, each of which contains
a number of chapters on topics that
can be considered subcategories of that
issue area. So, for example, under the
issue area of Environment
one will find chapters on Air,
Water,
Energy,
Pollution,
and more. This organizational structure
generally follows the coding tree that
the Portland
State University Survey Research Lab
developed to organize and sort the responses
received from the public (for more information,
read about our Methodology).
Given that community members responded
to open-ended questions and frequently
touched on inter-related themes, many
of their comments defy easy categorization.
The result is that some ideas appear
in multiple sections of the report
and some themes are addressed from
slightly different angles in more
than one chapter.
To help readers find related content,
we have included a number of links
throughout the report that point to
chapters in which related content
can be found. For example, in a discussion
on neighborhood livability that mentions
the importance of parks, we might
say, “see Urban
Livability: Parks and Open Space
for more.”
- The organization of Voices
from the Community: The visionPDX Input
Report differs
in some respects from the organization
of the abridged
version of this report. In order
to improve readability, some smaller
sub-sections have been merged to form
larger chapters and the titles of some
chapters have been slightly modified.
We have also altered the order in which
the chapters appear, choosing to list
them alphabetically for smoother navigation.
Quotes:
- All quotes displayed are taken from
the actual surveys submitted to the
City. Some typos and misspellings have
been corrected to improve readability,
and words orignally written in
capital letters (CAPS) have also been
made lower-case. However, all other
elements of the quotes, including grammatical
errors, have been left unchanged.
Because survey questions varied from
"What do you value about Portland
and why?" to "What changes do you
most want to see right now?" it is
imporant to know the context in which
a quote is given. Many people
include the question prompt in their
response, providing enough context
so that no additional information
is needed. In these cases, quotes
have not been altered. However, in
cases where the survey question is
not clear, we have added clarifying
phrases in brackets to the front of
quotes, which look like this: “[What
I value is] the clean air, the rivers,
and all the trees.”
Terminology:
- Throughout the report, a number of
different terms are used to refer to
survey respondents, including “Portlanders,”
“people” and “community members.” These
terms are used interchangeably and in
all cases refer only to those individuals
who filled out the visionPDX survey
and not to the community at large.
To be inclusive of all survey respondents,
some of whom are refugees, immigrants,
visitors to Portland and others, we
chose not to use the term “citizen”
when referring to visionPDX participants.
- In order to provide a general sense
of how many people mentioned a particular
theme, issue or strategy, we often use
words such as “most,” “many,” “some”
and “few.” These are relative terms
that refer to the number of people within
a given chapter that hold a certain
point of view. The visionPDX survey
was designed to be qualitative, not
quantitative, so we cannot give percentages
or numbers of respondents who agree
or disagree with a theme, issue or strategy.
Because some chapters contain more
comments than others, the number of
respondents conveyed by these terms
("many," "most," etc.) varies from
chapter to chapter. For example, in
a chapter that contains 1,000 responses
in a given topic area, “most” will
refer to many more people than it
will in a chapter that contains only
300 responses.
- The terms “minority voices” or “minority
opinions” refer to perspectives that
were voiced by a small number of people
and that differ from the majority opinion
expressed in the data. These terms do
not refer to views expressed by ethnic,
cultural, religious or other groups
that form a minority of the overall
population.
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