Public opinion surveys should be conducted so as to be accessible and understandable to Americans with disabilities. Informal surveys may be included in public information materials, especially if distributed through local newspapers. Surveys are not interactive. Used in isolation, surveys produce data, not a dialogue between the community and an agency or between groups of people. The information in a questionnaire should be neutral to allow respondents to make up their own minds about a question or concern.
Surveys can spread misinfor mation if poorly or ambiguously drafted.
A public opinion survey is sometimes difficult to undertake for some stakeholder groups for certain topics. Survey results may not reflect the entire community 's views, especially in the case of informal surveys. Public opinion surveys can be taken at almost any time during a process. Used carefully and repeated over time, they keep an agency well-informed of changes in public knowledge of a planning effort or project development and people's preferences within that knowledge.