Methods
Survey Background
The City of Port St . Lucie partnered with National Research Center ( NRC ) at Polco to conduct a City-wide employee survey . Employees were asked questions about their job satisfaction , work environment , compensation , supervisory relationships , organizational climate and communication . This was the fourth survey of Port St . Lucie employees . The results can be used by the City to better understand employee experiences , address employee concerns and monitor perspectives over time .
The survey consisted of thematically similar statements grouped into question sets and all were asked on a four-point scale ( e . g ., strongly agree , somewhat agree , somewhat disagree , strongly disagree or excellent , good , fair , poor ).
Selecting survey recipients
All City of Port St . Lucie employees were eligible to complete the survey . The City provided NRC with a list of email addresses for all employees with City emails . The City also communicated with all employees about the survey so that employees without City emails were informed about and could participate in the survey .
Survey Administration and Response
The survey was administered on the Polco platform . Beginning October 17th , 2022 , employees were mailed a postcard to their homes with a link inviting them to complete the web-based survey on Polco . About a week later , City of Port St . Lucie employees with email addresses received two email messages several days apart with a URL link to the survey .
The survey was available in English only . Data collection continued through December 2 , 2022 . Of the 1,284 employees receiving an invitation to complete the survey , a total of 512 employees returned completed surveys , providing a response rate of 40 %. The response rate was calculated using the American Association of Public Opinion Research ( AAPOR ) response rate # 2 for Internet surveys of named persons .
Because the survey was intended to be taken by all employees , no traditional margin of error was calculated . However , because not all employees responded , NRC recommends using plus or minus five percentage points as the “ range of uncertainty ” around any given percent reported for the organization as a whole .
Since the surveys were completed online , the data were automatically saved electronically . The survey dataset was analyzed through a combination of software programs including the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences ( SPSS ), R , Python , and Tableau . The anonymity of all employees was fully maintained as no names or other unique identifiers have been recorded .
Weighting the Data
The characteristics of the survey sample were compared to those provided by the City of Port St . Lucie . Sample results were weighted by age , gender , race , full / part time status , management status , and number of years worked using these norms to reflect the makeup of the City ’ s employees . Weights were calculated using an iterative , multiplicative raking model known as the ANES Weighting Alogrithm .**
The results of the weighting scheme are presented in the table below .
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