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Community Survey
The Town of Apex partners with Zencity on a semiannual (spring and fall) survey to gather feedback about what our residents are happy with, where we can improve, and what’s important to them.
Zencity is a community input / insights platform that local governments across the country use to get meaningful feedback from more residents, and better understand community concerns and priorities.
Purpose of the Survey
- Objectively assess community satisfaction with the delivery of town services
- Help determine priorities for our community
- Compare our performance with other towns regionally and across the country
- Compare current results with previous years' results
Collection Methods
Representative Sample
Zencity uses dynamic online sampling to ensure surveys reach the full spectrum of residents for a diverse representative sample reporting the entire community.
The survey will appear to residents through the use of digital ads in various locations such as social media platforms. The ad pictured to the right is similar to what mobile device and computer users can expect to see.
In addition to responses completed online, we will also follow best practices to gather non-digital responses.
- Are my responses confidential?
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Zencity takes protecting privacy and ensuring respondent anonymity seriously. All survey responses are completely confidential and they do not collect any personal information that could identify a specific respondent (except, where applicable, an email address, for those that opt-in to participate in similar surveys in the future). Zencity only collects the survey question responses that are provided, along with anonymous metadata, which are used to improve the quality of the advertisements. There is no way that Zencity can identify an individual from the survey responses provided. For respondents who opt-in to future research, email addresses are not used to link the address to specific survey responses.
Further, Zencity does not share individual-level responses to the surveys with customers, only aggregated numbers, summaries, or disaggregated and anonymized open-ended responses. Zencity removes any information that could potentially be used to de-anonymize comments provided.
Finally, all survey responses are stored in secure, encrypted databases, using industry best practices Zencity’s policies and practices are in accordance with the leading data privacy regulations such as, where applicable, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The full privacy policy can be found at zencity.io/privacy-policy.
- Are the responses representative of our community?
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Yes. Zencity collects a representative sample of opinions from the population in any geographic area surveyed while minimizing potential sources of statistical bias. Zencity uses proprietary technology to track the demographic representativeness of its samples in real-time and make corresponding adjustments to ad targeting to maximize representativeness. In communities where many residents are not native English speakers, questionnaires are available in multiple languages and reach out to potential respondents in their native languages.
Zencity uses the annually-updated U.S. Census American Community Survey data to set response targets for each geographic area based on five different variables: race, age, sex, education level, and household income. Based on self-reported demographic data collected in the survey, they track the demographic representativeness of the respondents in real-time and make adjustments to obtain a closely-representative sample.
- How do you verify respondents are Apex residents?
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Zencity uses existing digital advertising networks to target digital advertisements, localized to reach each community. Those who see the ad and choose to take the surveys voluntarily provide their ZIP code. The combination of where the ads are targeted, combined with the respondent’s self-reported ZIP code enables the assignment of a response to a community.
- How can I see the results?
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The town will receive periodic reports from Zencity with survey results and analysis. Once the necessary sampling of responses has been received, the we'll share the results on this page.