DOI: 10.7280/d1g59s
title: Annual Survey of Orange County 1990

description: The theme of this year's survey is "Issues of the 1990s."
 The 1990 Orange County Annual Survey explores three interrelated issues
 that are central topics in discussions about the county's future.
 These issues are the environment, regional government, and transportation
 alternatives. The sample size is 1,017 Orange County adult residents.
 Online data analysis & additional documentation in Link below.
description: The Orange County Annual Survey was co-directed by Mark Baldassare, a UC
 Irvine professor of social ecology and Cheryl Katz, research associate.
 For the survey, 1,017 adult Orange County residents were interviewed by
 telephone Sept. 5 to 21. In Orange County, where more than 97 percent of
 households have telephones, this method of interview gives highly
 representative data.
 
 Interviewing was conducted on weekend days and weekday nights, using a
 random sample of 4,000 listed and unlisted telephone numbers. These were
 generated by computer from a list of working blocks of telephone
 exchanges. The telephone sample was generated by Pijacki and Associates of
 Shoreham, N.Y. The field work was conducted at the Center for Survey
 Research by UCI's Public Policy Research Organization.
 
 Of the telephone numbers called, 25 percent resulted in completed
 interviews and 15 percent were refusals. The completion rate for the
 survey (completions divided by completions plus refusals) was 63 percent,
 consistent with earlier annual surveys.
 
 Other telephone outcomes include the following: 21 percent disconnected
 numbers; 3 percent computer or fax lines; 15 percent businesses and other
 non-Orange County households; 20 percent persistent no answers and 1
 percent persistently unavailable respondents. Two percent were not
 completed because of language problems, including non-English speaking
 households and hearing impairment. These figures are also consistent with
 earlier annual surveys.
 
 Within a household, respondents were chosen for interview using the
 Troldahl-Carter method. This method randomly selects a household member
 from a grid that includes information on the number of adult household
 members and the number of adult men in the household. Up to six callbacks
 were attempted per telephone number.
 
 Each interview included 95 questions and took an average of 20 minutes to
 complete. Most interviews ranged in length from 15 to 25 minutes. The
 surveys were designed in three stages over eight months. The first stage
 involved feedback on survey topics and questions from the annual
 survey's Steering Committee, Advisory Committee and UCI colleagues.
 In the second stage, during the spring, UCI graduate students conducted
 focus group interviews on Orange County topics and pretested survey
 questions. After a draft was reviewed by the advisory committee, final
 revisions of the survey questions were made.
 
 The interview began with questions about housing, consumer confidence and
 perceptions of life in Orange County. These were followed by questions on
 the environment, regional governance and transportation alternatives. A
 major section of the interview was devoted to questions about mass
 transit. Later in the interview, we turned to other topics, including
 privacy, civic participation and charitable giving. The conclusion of the
 survey was devoted to questions about work, commuting, demographic
 characteristics and political attitudes.
 
 The survey's validity was checked by comparing the sample
 characteristics to Orange County population data. We compared the 1990
 survey results to previous annual surveys and other recent survey data.
 Age, income and other demographic features of our sample were comparable
 with those noted in other studies.
 
 For the purposes of analysis, we statistically weighted the sample to
 represent the actual regional distribution of Orange County residents. The
 population estimates for north, west, central and south county regions
 were from data issued by the Demographic Research Unit, County of Orange.
 The 1990 U.S. Census preliminary population estimates by city were also
 reviewed.
 
 Several other efforts were made to correct for possible errors in
 interviewing or data processing. Approximately 10 percent of the completed
 interviews were verified through callbacks. All questionnaires were
 checked by a supervisor immediately after completion. Finally, keypunched
 data were verified for all respondents in the survey sample.
 
 The sampling error for this survey is +/3 percent at the 95 percent
 confidence level. This means that 95 times out of 100, the results will be
 within 3 percentage points of what they would be if all adults in Orange
 County were interviewed. The sampling error for any subgroup would be
 larger.
 
 Sampling error is just one type of error to which surveys are subject.
 Results may also be influenced by factors such as question wording, survey
 timing and other aspects of survey design.