I am working with a client on LEED EBOM 2009 project located in an urban area. The building has over 2,051 FTEs and multiple tenants. We don't have access to email addresses for each of the occupants, but do have tenant contacts who can forward information to the tenants. Given the location, we believe more than 75% of the occupants commute via some form other than a high-emitting single-occupancy vehicle. Our challenge is reaching the 80% response rate in order to extrapolate the data for the whole building.
We are looking at conducting the survey using the random sampling approach per the reference guide. However, since we don't have access to tenant's individual names and email addresses, we can't randomly select and contact tenants. We may be able to ask our tenant contacts to distribute the survey to a random group of their employees, however we then have less control of the distribution and return. Alternatively, we could position a team at the elevators and sample every fourth person who enters - although it would be random, we're not sure it would be a truly representative sample of the building population.
Any thoughts on these two methodologies, or others that would be acceptable to the reviewer that we should consider, to achieve the highest return using the random sample approach?
Corinna Kester
Consultant, Sustainable Buildings and OperationsKEMA
51 thumbs up
March 29, 2010 - 9:32 pm
Hi Katie -
The second approach you mention - position a team at the elevators and sample every fourth person who enters - will get you the highest return, because you are much less likely to have nonrespondents. As long as all building occupants must pass by the survey location and as long as you have a systematic method for selecting respondents that is not impacted by occupants' transportation method, your sample can reasonably be considered random. The major downside of this approach is that it requires a significant amount of staff time. I have seen this approach successfully utilized by other project teams.
With the first approach you mention - asking your tenant contacts to distribute the survey to a random group of their employees - you are likely to see a significantly lower response rate than with an in-person survey.
Katie Anthony
18 thumbs up
March 30, 2010 - 11:31 am
Thanks Corinna. I'm glad to hear that you have seen the systematic "elevator approach" work well and be accepted by the LEED reviewers. It should certainly get the client the highest response rate on their survey!