Hello Everyone,

Ohio DD Council is beginning to work on our survey to solicit ideas from our constituency on what they feel are the real issues in this State that Council should focus on during the next 5 Years.

Ohio Staff generally agreed that including basic topics for participants to rank was not ideal. For example, having people rank “Public Awareness” in comparison to “Employment” didn’t seem like a good way to do it. The staff present, a Council member and Communications grantee believed that outreach, public policy, public awareness and to some degree, self-advocacy, were “ways” to address barriers, rather than barriers themselves.

Discussion also occurred about the idea of customizing surveys to each participant. For example, if a person taking the survey identifies as a county board staff person, they would receive a different set of questions than a family member or person with a disability. Splitting the responses between these categories is helpful to avoid oversampling of one group in comparison to another.

The biggest theme of the discussion was that Ohio’s survey should dive a little bit deeper into what people think, want or believe. For example, having a person say that transportation is a problem for them is one thing, but if the problem is getting to work on time, that’s also an employment-related barrier. However, in the past, we limited responses to just a general topic, and ultimately, that topic was deemed to belong to a specific committee. This time, instead of just ranking topics, Ohio would like to include more specific questions that would help to delineate what the barrier is and what outcomes are needed through the process of developing the next 5-Year Plan.

It was first considered to offer just open-ended questions, but everyone agreed that response rates to those types of surveys are not good, and are very difficult to aggregate and categorize. So it was decided to offer questions specific to topics and allow for open-ended feedback. The real question is: “What does your Council consider those general topics to be?”

Would you share with Ohio what your State has done in the past to reach out to people for feedback on what your Council should be working on in the next 5 Years?

Please provide your responses by March 29, 2019.  Thank you.

Carla R. Cox

Program Administrator

Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities

Ohio Developmental Disabilities Council

899 E. Broad Street, Suite 203

Columbus, Ohio 43205

Phone 614-644-5538 | ddc.ohio.gov

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