PUBLIC USE SURVEY

"A Useful Administrative Tool"

by Dwight R. McCurdy

It has often been said by park administrators that researchers and educators "sit in their ivory towers" and expound on how things should be, when in fact there are no feasible ways to get there. This is no doubt true in some situations, but on the other hand, the park administrators themselves "sit in an ivory tower." Almost without exception, park administrators in the process of obtaining their position have been removed from the "on-the-ground" situation for such a time period that the conditions there have changed significantly.

This being true, how can park administrators keep informed of the changing conditions on their areas? One means of information is the public use survey. For example, the following (4) questions could be asked park visitors:

1. How many individuals are in your group?

2. How long did you stay this visit?

3. For the activities you participated in during this visit, please give the amount of time spent in each.

Activity A______

Activity B _______

Activity C_______

Total______

4. Where do you live? (Or how many miles did you travel to get here, one way?)

From these four questions, the following data could be obtained for your entire system (or district), for each park or selected sites within a park, and for selected activities:

Parameter

Total visits- Setting expenditure priorities

Total activity hours- Maintenance planning

Ave. sty./visit (person or group)- Service planning

Ave. size of group- Facility planning

Ave. vehicle and size of group/ vehicle- Public use estimation

Distance travelled- Market area Determination

Peak use periods- Personnel staffing

It should be emphasized that obtaining data does not accomplish the entire task. To be usable, the data must be accurate and represent the "on the ground" conditions. Since it generally is not feasable to interview all your visitors, the survey must be designed to insure a representative sample of visitors to be studied. For most surveys, "expert" advice outside your agency should be consulted.

If the above or similar data can be obtained for management and planning purposes, why hasn't it been collected more often in the past. There are many reasons for the lack of public surveys in park administration. First, until the recent recreation crunch on our parks, there has not been a need for such data. Secondly, where there have been surveys, most have tried to solve all problems by collecting more data than needed in an un-usable form. These add on data increased the cost of the surveys to a point of infeasability. Other reasons for the negative attitude toward surveys include:

a. Lack of support and use of the data by administrators.

b. Failure to conduct the surveys according to design, thereby obtaining unrepresentative data.

c. Use of data out of context.

However, the above negative aspects of surveys are not insurmountable. Therefore, public use surveys can be a valuable park administrative tool if applied with discretion.

Public use surveys can be a valuable tool for park management and planning. However, the survey should not be all inclusive but designed to accomplish specific objectives. Finally, to insure representative data, the survey must be conducted in accordance with the agreed upon statistical design.

Illinois Parks and Recreation 24 July/August, 1974