Denver Area Report Pt. 2

Research – Straight Talk From Americans – 2000

A Survey for the Pew Center for Civic Journalism 
Conducted By Princeton Survey Research Associates

The Denver Area: Part Two

CONTENTS
Detailed Findings: Education
Not As Good Around Here: The Public Schools
Teaching Values
Table 5: Needs for the Local Public Schools
Detailed Findings: Community and Personal Life
Table 6: Satisfaction with Your Time
The State of the Nation – Viewed from Denver
Table 7: Most Important National Issue
Detailed Findings: The News Media
Media Usage
Table 8: How often do you read/watch the news?
Appendix
Survey Methodology
Response Rate
[To San Francisco Part One >>]

Detailed Findings: Education

Education is high on every list in this survey and others of the issues that people say are important and that elected officials – whether local or national – should address. The nation’s public schools continue to receive fairly good marks, but the Denver area schools do not fare as well, with some problems seen as evident and in need of fixing. 

Nearly two-thirds of Denver residents (65%) say that the failure of public schools to provide a quality education is at least a small problem in the area. Thirty-nine percent say it is a big problem and 26 percent say it is a small problem. One in four (25%) say that this is not a problem and 10 percent say they do not know. These numbers show a greater perception of problems in the area than are apparent nationally, where 52 percent of the public said the quality of public education is a problem and 39 percent said it is not.

Not As Good Around Here: The Public Schools

Denver residents express serious concerns about their public schools, concerns that are clear in their ratings of the performance of the local public schools, whether thinking of the elementary schools or of the upper schools – including junior high, middle schools and high schools.

Fifty-six percent of Denver residents give their local elementary public schools positive marks, including 15 percent who say they are doing an excellent job. But 40 percent give the schools negative marks, with 31 percent saying only fair and 9 percent giving them poor ratings. Five percent are not sure. (These percentages are based on only the responses from those who say they can rate the schools. A total of 16 percent of the entire population say they cannot rate the elementary schools.)

For elementary schools, these marks are below the national figures. More than two-thirds of five Americans (70%) give the local elementary public schools positive marks, compared to 56 percent in Denver. 

The view of local public high schools in Denver is less positive and sharply divided. Only 48 percent give the local public middle and high schools positive marks, including 11 percent who rate their work excellent. Forty-six percent rate the schools negatively, with 31 percent fair and 15 percent poor. (Again, these percentages are based on only the responses from those who say they can rate the schools. A total of 21 percent of the entire population say they cannot rate the middle and high schools.)

Again, the local ratings are below the national figures, where 56 percent give the local middle and high schools positive marks.

Among demographic groups, there are some differences on both levels of education. Looking at the question on public middle and high schools:

• Those who live in the city give the high schools a negative rating by a 36 percent to 54 percent edge. Those who live in the suburbs are split about the high schools, 49 percent positive to 46 percent negative.

Parents and non-parents have roughly the same ratings of the schools overall, both at the elementary and high school levels. But that does not mean parents are unhappy with the schools their children actually attend. Parents are actually more positive when asked about the actual schools their children attend. Forty-nine percent of those with school-age children say they are very satisfied with the schools their children attend. Forty percent say they are somewhat satisfied with their kid’s schools. Six percent say they are not too satisfied or not at all satisfied with the schools. 

Teaching Values

One change that Denver residents – along with most Americans — want to see in the public schools is to teach values, in addition to academic subjects. Seven in ten residents (71%) say that the public schools should teach “values, respect and courtesy in addition to the traditional academic subjects.” Twenty-five percent say that the schools should “stick to teach academic subjects and leave teaching values to parents”. The views in Denver are almost a perfect match overall with the national numbers.

Cutting class sizes and updating the educational resources in the schools are seen as the greatest needs in the public education system. More than four in ten Denver residents rate these two demands as great needs in the local schools, with slightly fewer – about a third – focusing on teacher quality and parental involvement.

The focus on class size and updated teaching resources is more intense in Denver than elsewhere. While four in ten Denver residents see a great need for these changes, only about one-third of those nationwide see the same level of need in their own public schools.

Replacing outdated teaching resources with up-to-date materials and tools such as computers is clearly driven by various demographic differences.

• Parents are more likely than non-parents to see this as a great need (54% vs. 40%).

On the issue of opportunities for parental participation, there are both differences and surprisingly similar views among groups.

• There is no difference between parents and non-parents on this issue.
• Minority residents are more likely than white residents to see this as a great need (50% vs. 29%).
• City residents (39%) are more likely than those who live elsewhere to see this need as a great one.

Replacing outdated teaching resources with up-to-date materials and tools such as computers is driven in part by various demographic differences.

• Fifty-nine percent of the minority residents see this as a great need, compared to only 39 percent of white residents.
• Those under age 50 (47%) are more likely than those over 50 (35%) to see this as an urgent need.
• Fifty-five percent of city dwellers see this as a greatneed compared to 37 percent of suburbanites.

Detailed Findings: Community and Personal Life

Overall, the sense of community in Denver area seems reasonably robust. Many know their neighbors, and a substantial fraction know all of their neighbors. Citizens think that they can make a difference by volunteering their time or by getting together with others to make changes in their communities. And despite the increased time pressures that are a fact of life in the new “Internet Economy”, they remain satisfied with the amount of time they spend with their family, with their friends and just relaxing.

The most basic connection one can have with those who live in your neighborhood is that you know them and that you know their names, which is a step beyond just knowing someone well enough to say “Hello” on the street. Less than a third of Denver residents (29%) say they know the names of all their neighbors who live close to them. Fifty percent say they know only some of their neighbors and 21 percent say they do not know the names of any of their neighbors. Denver residents are somewhat less familiar with their neighbors than is the case generally around the country, according to the national PCCJ survey.

There are some interesting differences among demographic groups.

• The youngest residents, those under age 35, are about twice as likely not to know the names of any neighbors than older residents (32% vs. 15%).
• Wealthier residents – those with incomes of $60,000 a year or more – are more likely to know all their neighbors than those with lower incomes (39% vs. 24%).
• Parents with children under 18 at home are more likely than those without children to know all their neighbors (37% vs. 25%).

Where Denver residents see problems in their communities, they do have strategies for solving those problems. The Denver public likes volunteering as the path: 47 percent saying that volunteering and 28 percent say that getting others involved is the best choice. Only seven percent say complain to the authorities and four percent say give money. Five percent are not sure.

When it comes to their daily lives, Denver residents are reasonably satisfied with the amount of time they spend in key tasks – with family, friends and relaxation. Nearly eight out of ten residents say they are satisfied with the amount of time they spend with their families, with nearly five in 10 saying they are very satisfied. (See Table 6.) They express somewhat lower levels of satisfaction with how much time they spend with friends and relatives, how much time they spend on hobbies and clubs, and how much time they spend just relaxing.

These findings are similar to those from the national PCCJ survey. And that national figures are not dramatically different from those found in a 1993 survey for Family Circlemagazine (10 Telephone survey for Family Circle Family Index Project, based on 2,004 interviews of adult heads of households, June 1-June16, 1993 by Princeton Survey Research Associates.) For example, satisfaction with the amount of time spent “just relaxing” is down just a bit. In 1993, 39 percent said they were very satisfied with how much time they spend relaxing and 37 percent said they were somewhat satisfied.

Note: An asterisk (*) means less than .5 percent gave this answer.

Age, parental status and employment status are related to satisfaction.

• As one would expect, those who are age 65 and over are more satisfied with how they spend their time than younger residents. Those in this older age group are overwhelmingly retired. For example, 77 percent of those age 65 and over are very satisfied with the amount of time they spend just relaxing, compared with 21 percent of those age 35 to 49.
• Women are more likely to be very satisfied with the amount of time they spend with their families (50%) than men (39%). And women say more often than men that they are similarly happy with the time they spend with friends and relatives (42% vs. 31%).
• Parents and non-parents are equally satisfied with the amount of time they spend with their families. But non-parents are more likely to be very satisfied with the amount of time they spend with friends and relatives (41% vs. 28%), with the amount of time spent on hobbies (38% vs. 22%), with the amount of time spent relaxing (45% vs. 21%) than parents.
• Another group that is not as satisfied with the amount of time they have each day is those families where both the husband and wife work. In these families, there is generally less satisfaction than those where only one member of the couple works. For example, 21 percent of those in the two-income households are verysatisfied with the time they spend just relaxing, while 45 percent of those from single-income households are satisfied. It is important to remember that dual-income households does not mean high-income households: nearly two out of five of these households in Denver (44%) reported incomes of less than $60,000 a year despite at least two incomes.

The State of the Nation – Viewed from Denver

Denver residents are just about as worried about the direction of the nation as they are about how things are going in the home communities. Fifty-nine percent say they are satisfied with “the way things are going in this country today”, while 34 percent say they are dissatisfied. Seven percent do not know or refuse to answer. 

The view of the nation from Denver is a bit more positive than the national numbers. The national PCCJ survey found a roughly even split – 48 percent versus 44 percent – in satisfaction about the direction of the country. These national numbers represent a marked improvement from only five years ago. In a March 1994 survey for the Times-Mirror Center, only 24 percent of Americans were satisfied with the direction of the country and 71 percent were dissatisfied. (A telephone survey for the Times-Mirror Center for the People and The Press, based on interviews with 2,001 adults, conducted March 16-21, 1994, under the supervision of Princeton Survey Research Associates.)

Looking at the most important national problems, Denver residents put crime and violence at the top of the list, along with moral issues. But these concerns are far from dominating ones. Only 16 percent mentioned crime and violence and only 14 percent moral issues, a far cry from the overwhelming concerns about issues of crime or the economy or foreign policy that has been seen in national surveys on this topic over the years. (See Table 7.) 

General comments about a moral decline in the nation, a lack of values, a failure to embrace religious values are mentioned by this 14 percent of the public. A significant subset of these concerns focuses on the moral decline of the family and the failure of the family structure. 

As is true nationally, Denver residents are concerned about children and teenagers, education and about the state of the nation’s political leadership. The child and teen issues are mentioned by nine percent and run the gamut from concerns about too many children on the streets to a lack of respect and out-of-control behavior. Education is also high on the list of problems, with nine percent of the public mentioning education. Another seven percent mention problems with politics and politicians. This cluster of issues is also concentrated moral matters: a lack of national leadership and the failure of politicians to set a moral example.

With the economy booming along with low unemployment and low inflation, matters relating to money are mentioned by about six percent of the public. These comments range from calls for lower taxes, to a focus on the people who are still unemployed and to those who say that prices are still rising and everything still costs too much. 

Just as no one issue dominates the list of national concerns, there is also no one issue that the Denver public thinks is being ignored by government officials in Washington. No more than 12 percent mention any single issue as not getting adequate government attention. And the Denver list of ignored issues, short as it is, is quite similar to the figures from the survey of all Americans.

Detailed Findings: The News Media 

While the Denver public doesn’t fault the news media for failing to cover important problems, many do still express criticism of both the national and local news media. This survey did not ask about any local news media organization by name: rather, generic references to local television news and local daily newspapers were used.

The one particular criticism that does resonate in the minority community in Denver – and nationally — is that the local news media unfairly runs many negative stories about minorities. While the Denver public overall does not share that criticism (67% vs. 25%), minority residents agree with the criticism by a 48 percent to 38 percent margin.

“When something happens to a white person… it is not mentioned, but when something happens to a black person, the news media talks to much about it.”
— One view from Denver

There are relatively few issues that Denver residents see are being ignored by the national or local news media. This is, of course, a difficult question for the average citizen to answer, since they are not usually in the position of making decisions of what is covered by the news media. But it is a question that can detect issues that are troubling the public, but not yet receiving major media attention. Among Denver residents, the largest categories of response to these two questions are diametrically opposed: generalized criticism of the news media (16%) national media, (11%) local media) paired against those who say they cannot think of anything that is being ignored by the news media (25% national media, 23% local media).

Media Usage

There are many different methods for measuring media usage, including the public’s readership or viewership of daily news stories. And the advent of the Internet has complicated this measurement further. Whatever the measure, there is little doubt that those who run the nation’s news media organizations are worried about declining news readership and news viewership. This survey includes some measures of news media usage that provide a context for the analysis of the public’s views on the issues and it’s judgments of news media performance. Again, no specific local newspaper or television station was mentioned.

APPENDIX

Survey Methodology

The survey results are based on telephone interviews with a representative sample of 502 adults, age 18 and older living in telephone households in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson counties in the Denver area. The interviews were conducted from November 10 through November 30, 1999.

Sample Design

The sample for this survey was designed to produce a representative sample of telephone households in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson counties. The selected sample is a random digit sample of telephone numbers selected from telephone exchanges in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson counties and was drawn by Survey Sampling, Inc. of Westport, Connecticut following PSRA’s specifications.

The random digit aspect of the sample is used to avoid “listing” bias. The design of the sample ensures this representation by random generation of the last two digits of telephone numbers selected on the basis of their area code, telephone exchange (the first three digits of a seven digit telephone number), and bank number (the fourth and fifth digits). Only working banks of telephone numbers are selected. A working bank is defined as 100 contiguous telephone numbers containing one or more residential listings.

The sample was released for interviewing in replicates, which are random subsamples of the larger sample. Using replicates to control the release of sample to the field ensures that the complete call procedures are followed for the entire sample. The use of replicates also ensures that the regional distribution of numbers called is appropriate. Again, this works to increase the representativeness of the final sample.

At least 10 attempts were made to complete an interview at every sampled telephone number. The calls were staggered over times of day and days of the week to maximize the chances of making a contact with a potential respondent. All interview breakoffs and refusals were re-contacted at least once in order to attempt to convert them to completed interviews. In each contacted household, interviewers asked to speak with the “youngest male 18 or older who is at home.” If there is no eligible man at home, interviewers asked to speak with “the oldest woman 18 or older who lives in the household.” This systematic respondent selection technique has been shown empirically to produce samples that closely mirror the population in terms of age and gender.

Weighting

Non-response in telephone interview surveys produces some known biases in survey-derived estimates because participation tends to vary for different subgroups of the population, and these subgroups are likely to vary also on questions of substantive interest. For example, men are more difficult than women to reach at home by telephone, and people with relatively low educational attainment are less likely than others to agree to participate in telephone surveys. In order to compensate for these known biases, the sample data are weighted in analysis.

Claritas Data Services provided the demographic weighting parameters for Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson counties. The population parameters are the demographic characteristics of households with adults age 18 and older, which are then compared with the sample characteristics to construct sample weights. The results have been weighted to adjust for variations in the sample relating to sex, age, race, and education. The weights are derived using an iterative technique that simultaneously balances the distributions of all weighting parameters. 

Statistical Tests

PSRA calculated the effects of the sample weights on the statistical efficiency of the sample design, so that an adjustment can be incorporated into tests of statistical significance when using these data. This so-called “design effect” or “deff” represents the loss in statistical efficiency that results from systematically undersampling (through sample design and non-response) parts of the population of interest. 

The square root of the design effect should be multiplied by the standard error of a statistic in computing tests of statistical significance. Based on this calculation, we calculate the 95 percent confidence interval for results expressed as percentages in this study as plus or minus 5 percentage points for results near 50% based on the total sample. 

Response Rate

PSRA calculates a response rate as the product of three individual rates: the contact rate, the cooperation rate, and the completion rate. Of the residential numbers in the sample, 66 percent were contacted by an interviewer and 51 percent agreed to participate in the survey. Eighty-six percent were found eligible for the interview. Furthermore, 95 percent of eligible respondents completed the interview. Therefore, the final response rate is 31 percent.