Final report - Integrated Land Management Bureau

Since the population of business owners in the North and Central Coast is small, a 100%
sample is possible for the survey, eliminating the risk of sampling error. It is likely that
most businesses will have telephones and will be listed either in the telephone directory,
websites, or obtained through business license information. By asking businesses that are
being surveyed to share names and contact information for other local businesses, it will
ensure that there are not businesses missed. Home-based and sole proprietor businesses
that are not incorporated can be found this way. The greatest investment will be in the
first year when the database is created. In subsequent years, the business database will be
updated, but not created from scratch.
Employment data can be misleading if employees are seasonal or part-time. It will be
important for the survey to include questions about seasonal and part-time employees so
an accurate account of employment can be derived. Telephone surveyors will need to
receive training and have the ability to read questions fluently and communicate verbally.
Training will include information on the purpose of the survey, the survey sponsor, how
to complete a call record, how to handle difficult questions from respondents, how many
times to call back if no answer, and so on (Salant and Dillman 1994).
8.1.2 Household survey using randomly selected communities and
households in the plan areas
Description: To quantitatively measure indicators such as social capital and sense of
place, it will be necessary to obtain information directly from individuals in the plan
areas through written surveys that will probably need to be administered in person with a
surveyor on site in the more remote communities. It will be expensive to conduct surveys
in dispersed First Nations communities, but a random selection of communities and
households within the communities will eliminate the need to survey every community
and every household in the community and will keep costs to a minimum. Significant
“front end” work in the communities to secure buy-in for the surveys will lead to a higher
response rate than without “front end” work. It’s suggested that a survey company or
organization with experience conducting data collection in remote Aboriginal
communities be contracted.
With a rough estimate of 3,500 households in the two areas, if a 5% error and 95%
confidence interval are desired and a 20% response rate is expected, 512 completed
surveys would be required (calculated using the sample size calculator at
http://www.custominsight.com/articles/random-sample-calculator.asp) to obtain ability to
generalize to results across the plan area. A stratified approach where random samples
are drawn from municipalities and random samples are drawn from more remote
communities could be considered.
Frequency: Every five years
Cost: Costs will depend on number of communities and the number of households in
each community surveyed. Cost estimates for most mail surveys range from $20-$30 per
respondent (at 512 respondents, costs could be $10,000 to $15,000); however costs could
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