1994 Survey of Registered Voters in School District USD 497

Abstract

he Telephone Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Kansas conducted a household survey of registered voters living within the USO 497 school district. Interviewers called afternoons and evenings between March 28, 1994 and April 15, 1994. Four hundred and seventy one registered voters answered the questions developed by the Lawrence School Board.

The primary purpose of this survey was to assess the opinions of registered voters about the building of a second high school and the bond issue that would be necessary to pay for it. In addition, registered voters were polled about their preferred location of the new school and its configuration, their willingness to support renovations of existing schools, and their general attitudes about local schools and safety in the schools. We also asked questions about the respondents' backgrounds and their personal experiences with Lawrence schools so that we could better understand their attitudes.

It is important 10 stress that this sample drawn in April 1994 does, within the bounds of sampling and measurement error, accurately reflect the views of current registered voters living within the Lawrence school district. It does not reflect the views of citizens in general nor of previous registered voters. In addition, because such a large percentage of Lawrence residents are university students. we tried to exclude "traditional students" from our sample. We defined traditional students as full-time students whose primary place of residence was somewhere other than Lawrence.