Developing a Survey Plan

The survey planning process will result in a sampling schedule(s) that lists the locations (recreation areas) and times (dates) on a Project at which a fixed quota of comment cards will be administered to visitors. Most Projects will generate two different sampling schedules- one for day-use visitors and another for camping visitors.

The planning process has been automated in a survey planning tool called the Survey Schedule Generator. This Microsoft Excel spreadsheet tool is specifically designed to help Project personnel create standardized survey plans for Visitor Comment Card surveys. Please review the remainder of this section before attempting to run the Survey Schedule Generator. It provides guidance that will help you accommodate a number of Project circumstances that might otherwise make it difficult to execute the survey.

The FY05-06 version of the Survey Schedule Generator is designed to be downloaded to and run from your personal computer. Click here to download. (Do not run this program from the server. To download the Generator, right click on the link and select “Save link target as” to save file to your computer).

You open the program by clicking on the Excel file icon as you would to open any other file or program. After opening the Excel spreadsheet, read the important information and instructions on the "Intro" worksheet to ensure that you will be able to run the pre-programmed features of the spreadsheet on your computer. When you are ready to plan your customer satisfaction survey, click on the "Get Started" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page to open the "Start" worksheet. You are now ready to begin.

The Survey Schedule Generator is self contained on the "Start" worksheet". It is divided into 4 steps. Each step requires you to select or modify information about your recreation areas and the survey plan wish to construct.

Step 1: Select a Project from the menu of available Projects. This will populate the work sheet area in Step 3 with a list of all Corps-managed recreation areas on the Project and associated visitation statistics for each area. The source data are from OMBIL.

Projects that have no Corps-managed recreation areas are not listed in the Survey Schedule Generator. These projects need not participate in the Comment Card Survey. If your Project is not listed, you can exit the Survey Schedule Generator now.

Step 2: From the menu of available dates, select the 3-month period you want to survey. This should ideally correspond to the 3 consecutive month period during which you expect to receive the highest visitation.

Available sampling windows correspond to whole calendar months. Mid-month starting and ending dates are not available.

Projects that elect to survey the June-July-August sampling window can also elect to either include or exclude the Memorial Day holiday period (May 28-31) from the survey. The default option is to include the Memorial Day holiday in the sampling window. If you do not want to survey during the Memorial Day holiday period, you can change the starting date to June 1 in Step 3 below.

Step 3: This step allows you to verify and/or modify the list of recreation areas that will be included in the comment card survey and the visitation data values that will be used to compute the selection probabilities associated with the draw of recreation areas and dates.

You can affect several aspects of the final survey plan in ways that can greatly improve your ability to execute the survey by ensuring that the recreation areas you choose to include in the survey are appropriate and the associated visitation data are accurate. Most of the time spent in the Survey Schedule Generator should be spent on this Step. You can make the following changes in the work area in Step 3:

• Add recreation areas: On the line immediately following the last recreation area in your project list, type in the name of the recreation area you want to add as well as all associated visitation data.

• Delete recreation areas from the survey: Do this by changing the "Total Visitation" value to "0" (i.e., zero). This will cause that recreation area to be omitted from the survey. Deleting the row of data associated with this recreation area is not recommended.

• Change "Total Visitation": If the default value in incorrect, you can change it to any numeric value you wish. Default values are derived from FY04 visitation estimates found in OMBIL. A more appropriate allocation of the survey effort may result from using visitation specifically for the 3-month period you intend to survey, instead of the default annual visitation values.

• Change the amounts of day-use and camping visitation: If you believe that the relative amount of day-use vs camping visitation is incorrect, you can correct it by changing the current entry for "Pct Campers" to any value from 0-100%. Entering 0% has the practical effect of eliminating that recreation area from the survey of camping visitors, while entering 100% has the practical effect of eliminating that recreation area from the survey of day-use visitors.

• Change the "Weekly Distribution of Visitation": The percentage of visitation across days of the week should add up to 100%. The default distribution has 47% of visitation on weekdays and 53% on weekend days. You can change the Monday thru Sunday values for each recreation area individually so they agree more closely with the distribution of visitation at different areas across your Project. Entering values that more accurately represent the distribution of visitation across the week will tend to place you more often at locations and dates with higher levels of visitation, thereby reducing the overall amount of time required to obtain the daily quota of comment cards.

• Change Holiday Visitation: Holidays that occur in the sampling window you selected in Step 2 will be included in the survey schedule unless you specifically exclude them. The increased visitation typically associated with the Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day holiday weekends can be specified in the columns associated with these holidays. Default values shown in the work area are national averages computed from past VERS surveys. These values represent the average daily visitation during the holiday period compared to a typical Sunday. For example, the default value of 61% for the July 4th holiday weekend is 2.25 times the default Sunday value of 27%. This indicates that daily visitation on the July 4th holiday weekend is 2.25 times that of a typical Sunday during a non-holiday period. Please note:
  • You can exclude the holiday period from the survey by entering a value of 0% for every recreation area listed in the work area.
  • If you are sampling the June-July-August sampling window, you can either include or exclude the Memorial Day holiday period (May 28-30). Using the default values will automatically include the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the sample. You can exclude the Memorial Day holiday weekend by entering a value of 0% for every recreation area listed in the work area.

Step 4: This step allows you to select one of 6 survey options. Clicking on one of the available options will immediately initiate a pre-programmed evaluation of the data and survey options you have specified and will generate a corresponding sampling schedule(s) for your Project.

The survey plan options available to you in Step 4 depend primarily on the total annual day-use and camping visitation that occurs on the Corps-managed recreation areas on your project. Two reduced-effort options and a No Survey option are available to projects with low project visitation and/or staffing or other limitations that make it administratively unfeasible to conduct the standard survey. Two of these options require written justification.

The survey plan options are described in the following table:

Option No.	Survey Description	Sample Size
		Total	Scheduled Sampling Periods	Samples Per Period
1	Survey of camping visitors on project; Survey of day-use visitors on project	240 + 240	30 + 30	8 + 8
2	Survey of day-use visitors on project	240	30	8
3	Survey of camping visitors on project	240	30	8
4	Combined survey of day-use and camping visitors across project	240	30	8
5	Combined survey of day-use and camping visitors with reduce sampling effort	120	20	6
6	No Survey	0	0	0

The options that are available on your Project are primarily a function of visitation levels on your Corps-managed recreation areas as follows:

Visitation At Corps-Managed Recreation Areas	Available Options
Project		Day-Use	Camping
	25,000	25,000	1
	25,000	<25,000	1 or 2
	<25,000	25,000	1 or 3
	<25,000	<25,000	1,2,3,4 or 5 Use of 5 requires justification.
<25,000			1,2,3,4,5 or 6 Use of 6 requires justification.

After Generating a Survey Schedule: The survey schedule(s) you generate will appear in a worksheet labeled "Calendar" if only one schedule is produced, or two worksheets labeled "Calendar-day" and "Calendar-camp" if two schedules are produced. Look for these worksheets among worksheet names listed in the bottom right-hand corner of the worksheet current visible on your screen. View a calendar by clicking on its worksheet name to make it appear on your screen. Then print it. You should bring the calendar(s) with you to the field so that you can record the information requested for each sampling period. You will also need it to complete the data entry process.