Jan. 2017 Information For Voters Survey Results

[Sil Dorsett]

Office of the Minister of World Assembly Affairs
February 9, 2017

January 2017 Information For Voters Survey Results​

(Scroll way down if you just want to see the charts)

In January 2017, the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs conducted a survey to gauge the performance of the Information For Voters program. This program issues dispatches and sends telegrams to our World Assembly nations for each General Assembly and Security Council resolution that makes it to a vote. 1542 telegrams were delivered encouraging participation in this survey, 759 of them were read, and 103 participated (There were also 3 participants from our Discord who voted while the survey was still being edited, for a total of 106 participants).

One of the goals of the ministry is to provide an expert analysis of World Assembly resolutions and form it into a voting recommendation based on responses from our forum discussion threads. From the survey responses gathered, it appears that most users are satisfied with the content and quality of the recommendation, and at least take them into consideration. However, there is a significant percentage of users that do not necessarily follow the recommendation and instead come to their own conclusions. We recognize that others may disagree with what we have to say and vote their own way, but we must also consider that there are those who just aren't sure and are looking for guidance. We strive to deliver a recommendation for every resolution when it comes to a vote, and users prefer receiving a telegram for every resolution.

A notable finding from the survey is a lack of participation in the forum discussion and voting threads, with only 23.6% of survey takers voting at least often if not always, and 48.5% saying they aren't even members of the forum. The ministry is open to suggestions on how to improve these figures. We should strive to improve overall forum membership, activity, and retention, and push for more votes and commentary in the discussion and voting threads.

In addition to feedback on the recommendations and gauging general interest in voting, we also polled overall awareness of the telegrams and dispatches. Most users don't know about the dispatches, which is another thing the ministry will work on. Tomb had a good idea of posting the recommendation on the RMB to start a discussion there, to get more feedback from those who don't maintain forum accounts. We can also use the RMB to draw attention to the forum and the dispatches. And when I had to manually send out a recent IFV telegram after I broke the IFV automation spreadsheet, I found that 106 users block our telegrams. 1516 users received the telegram, though only 554 (36.54%) read it. As a side note, there were 601 voters from our region on the last Security Council resolution, Condemn Elite Region of Global Command, for an activity level of 38.67%.

The survey also included a few general TNP questions, asking whether survey takers were citizens and/or members of the executive staff. The question asking about whether the user was a citizen should have been reworded to say "Are you a member of TNP's Regional Assembly?". There were more yes responses to this question than there were yes responses to being on the forum, which doesn't make sense considering we require forum membership to be a citizen. I think some users thought residing in the region automatically means you're a citizen.

A couple of other highlights from the comment sections of the survey:

• One user said to be more concise, perhaps looking for a "Too Long, Didn't Read" version of the recommendation.
• A couple of users said that we needed to provide a quick sentence or rationale for why we voted, but we already do this. After following up with one of the users, I found out that the user didn't even realize the rationale was hidden under a spoiler button.
• One person also said we need to be faster in getting the recommendation out. My goal is to try and have recommendations out within 12 hours of the vote starting, but sometimes this can be difficult especially if nothing was being voted on and the resolution queued up quickly.

A big "Thank You!" to the 106 participants in our survey. Your feedback is greatly appreciated, and we will use the data here to improve the program continuously. To the WA Ministry, keep up the good work!

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Voting Breakdowns:

Did you previously know about the Information for WA Voters program?

What do you think of the information telegrams for General Assembly resolutions?

Do the information telegrams affect how you vote on General Assembly resolutions?

Are you interested in continuing to receive information telegrams on General Assembly resolutions?

Do you vote on General Assembly resolutions?

Do you vote in forum voting threads on General Assembly resolutions?

What do you think of the information telegrams for Security Council resolutions?

Do the information telegrams affect how you vote on Security Council resolutions?

Are you interested in continuing to receive information telegrams on Security Council resolutions?

Do you vote on Security Council resolutions?

Do you vote in forum voting threads on Security Council resolutions?

Do you have "WA Campaign" telegrams blocked in your nation's telegram preferences?

Did you know that the Information for WA Voters program also publishes dispatches?

Do you generally approve (upvote) dispatches published by the Information for WA Voters program?

Are you a member of TNP's regional forum?

Are you a citizen of TNP?

Are you a member of the Executive Staff?