Botanic Gardens rated students’ favourite DCC service

Botanic Gardens rated students’ favourite DCC service

The OUSA has released a survey of student opinion about DCC services which shows the Botanic Gardens rated as number one by use, importance and satisfaction.

“It really shows that the Dunedin Botanic Gardens are important to students”, said OUSA President Francisco Hernandez. “Overall DCC services rated well and there wasn’t a great pool of students dissatisfied with the services surveyed; but there was some indifference to some services.”

“The data suggests a relationship between use and satisfaction – the more a DCC service is used by an individual the better the satisfaction rating. Shifting some of that indifference to satisfaction by attracting students and the wider public to use more of the services is one challenge to emerge from the survey results.”

The OUSA also asked what the DCC could do better. The answers highlight a desire for better recycling facilities, particularly of glass, a focus on insulation incentives for landlords, and a better flat rating system to help students make better decisions.

Open ended responses showed that better a bus service was the number one issue by a country mile. Students perceive buses to be too expensive and difficult to use. The OUSA will further submit to the ORC on this issue.

“Other areas for focus included quality housing, bike lanes and recycling in general” said Mr. Hernandez. “It looks like the DCC are on the right path and hopefully we can help make Dunedin even better.”

Survey weaknesses

The OUSA invited all students to participate in the DCC survey by email and invited all 11,500 of its Facebook members. There were 242 responses. Assuming the sample represents the population the confidence interval is plus or minus 6.26% with a confidence level of 95%.

The profile of the respondents matches key demographics by age, graduate status, year of study, and origin within New Zealand for the latest data which is for the 2011 student population.

There are two major variations. Firstly 65% of respondents were female compared to 57% of the 2011 student population. Secondly 6.5% of respondents were from “outside of New Zealand” compared to a 13% international student role in 2011.

“The survey is okay but has clear limitations. The best use of this data is to look at broad categories of DCC services, identify opportunities of underused services, consider the detailed areas for improvement including in the open ended response section.” Said Mr. Hernandez, “Overall the DCC should be reasonably happy with the results”

ENDS

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