[PaPaLarry]

I will be happy to fill out survey!!! Down the road, it will be helpful to all of us who care. Judging by the amount of people who attend the medical talks at Recreation Centers, there are plenty of people interested. Who cares how many questions on survey etc?? I'll just answer questions and send it on in. They still don't have your medical records, unless you want to volunteer them. I think this is a great idea to do this survey. So much more will come from it, plus we will be helping our fellow man and woman!!

[Yorio]

We attended the session at Savannah and we will definitely answer the survey and it will be nice to be called America's Healthiest Hometown in addition to being called Florida's Friendliest Hometown. Usually political surveys are around 2,000 plus to make it quite accurate give or take a few points up or down. So, 87,000 seems like over kill but..... I was hoping for a survey like they did in Farmingham, Mass. where they tracked people for decades. In our case, they may not have to do it for a long time unless they can follow us up above. The key question for me and for the future seniors will be whether the life style we lead including those happy hours will contribute more than 50% of the Villagers to a healthy life well passed 90+. In that regards, I don't mind being a guinea pig like the population of Farmingham with all the physical baggage I own.

[saratogaman]

Who funded this effort...private foundation, corporatations or we taxpayers?

[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by saratogaman

Who funded this effort...private foundation, corporatations or we taxpayers?

It is probably funded by a research grant to USF. Sometimes that is from business and sometimes from government.

[Villages PL]

Originally Posted by duffysmom

How anonymous are these surveys? I notice that each survey has a different number for each person. In this day and age I'm skeptical about giving out so much information. I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks

On the cover page it gives a phone number that you can call if you have any concerns about the survey. When you call them to voice your concern about privacy, there's a recorded message that says: "We are not available to take your call at this time. At the sound of the tone, leave your name and phone number and we will call you back." There's your privacy.

[Bogie Shooter]

The tracking number was assigned to be sure that the results don't expose 1,000, 100 or even 2 responses from the same number.

[Skip]

Originally Posted by Bogie Shooter

The tracking number was assigned to be sure that the results don't expose 1,000, 100 or even 2 responses from the same number.

What you're saying is that some people would go to the trouble of counterfeiting the form 1,000 times and sit and fill in the blanks for about 60,000 questions, then counterfeit the envelopes too and stuff them in the amenities box a few at a time. All this to tilt the average response a little.

That's very clever!

Wonder why they're going through The Villages first and not sent back to USF Health in Tampa directly who is suppose to be doing the tallying?

Skip

[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by Skip

What you're saying is that some people would go to the trouble of counterfeiting the form 1,000 times and sit and fill in the blanks for about 60,000 questions, then counterfeit the envelopes too and stuff them in the amenities box a few at a time. All this to tilt the average response a little.

That's very clever!

Wonder why they're going through The Villages first and not sent back to USF Health in Tampa directly who is suppose to be doing the tallying?

Skip

Boy Howdy.

[zcaveman]

I don't understand why there are two different questionaires. The missing questions are fairly important.

Maybe we will only do the one with the most questions and trash the other one.

[Bogie Shooter]

Another conspiracy in The Villages. That bad developer is at it again!

[uujudy]

Originally Posted by Skip

. . .
Wonder why they're going through The Villages first and not sent back to USF Health in Tampa directly who is suppose to be doing the tallying?

Skip

Skip, I think I figured it out.
If you look at the envelope the surveys came in, you'll see that they're printed with a non-profit permit. Over top of the permit is a sticker stamped with $00.85 postage. For some reason, the non profit permit couldn't be used, so they paid the first class rate to mail the surveys to ~ 40,000 households. According to my calculator 40,000 x $0.85 = $34,000. I think it would have been approximately half that amount if they could have used the non profit permit.

By depositing the surveys in the box at the mail station, I think they save the first class postage cost to send them directly to Tampa, especially since the postage cost was double what they expected to spend.

Jessica Fletcher