City of Ithaca
Chief of Police Search Process
Community Input Results
Explanation of Final Results
Background
This document is a description of the results of the community process designed to identify the characteristics that members of the Ithaca community would like to see in the next Chief of Police.The process began in the Fall of 1996 with community brainstorming of a large set of statements describing specific characteristics members of the community wanted to see in the next Chief. Members of the Ithaca community could submit statements in several ways: at the two community brainstorming forums; through the 24-hour telephone line; at drop-off boxes around the city; using mail-in forms printed in the newspaper; and directly on a world wide web site. A total of 310 statements were generated.
The Screening Committee then consolidated these statements into a final set of 74 characteristics, trying as much as possible to preserve the detail and representativeness of the original statements.
In January of 1997, the members of the community organized the statements. Each participating community member grouped the statements into groups that were similar in meaning, and each rated the statements for their relative importance on a 1-to-5 scale. People could participate through the community forum or by picking up materials and submitting their responses at drop-off boxes around the city.
The information was analyzed using a method known as concept mapping that was designed to aggregate data of this type and obtain the final results presented here.
Results
The Characteristics By Category Listing shows the 74 characteristics as they were grouped by the analysis into nine clusters, or broad categories of characteristics. The labels for each cluster were determined by the Screening Committee.The Community Process Results Figure shows the nine clusters of characteristics the community would like to see in the next Chief. This figure and the Characteristics By Category Listing describe the final results of the community input. They show nine fairly broad categories of characteristics that the community would like to see in the next Chief that are useful for thinking about the "big picture" view of the community. The 74 statements give us more detail about what these categories mean to members of the community.
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This project is sponsored in part by:
Concept Systems Incorporated |
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