The objective of Project 4121-D3 was to undertake a survey with a random sample of people residing in the northern river basins in order to collect information about these people, their use of the aquatic resources of the basin, and their attitudes and opinions about present and future water management in the basins. This survey was undertaken to help answer Study Board question #3: Who are the stakeholders and what are their consumptive and non-consumptive uses of the water resources in the river basins?
The household survey employed a sampling strategy and questionnaire that were developed as part of previous NRBS projects. The basic approach involved contacting a stratified, random sample of 1,200 households by telephone, soliciting their cooperation with the survey, mailing them the questionnaire, calling them to remind them to complete the survey and even conducting the survey over the telephone, if required. The study area was broken into 12 regions and initial intentions were to send questionnaires to at least 90 households in each region, and 180 in each of the two larger regions. As the project progressed, this number was increased to 100 for most regions and 200 in the larger regions. The questionnaire was pretested by 20 households before full implementation
occurred.
A total of 2,621 households were screened in order to find 1,400 that were willing to complete the survey. This represents a participation rate of 53.4 percent. At the end of the study, 714 questionnaires had been completed, representing a 51 percent response rate. The most common reason for not completing the questionnaire was that the household was no longer interested in the survey. Survey results were then coded into two data bases: one for written comments and the other containing numeric and coded information. Analysis of this information is to occur as part of future NRBS projects.