Here in the office we’ve been analyzing Raingarden Workshop surveys from years gone past, pulling out  trends and interesting snippets that can point us to a better awareness of our audience, understanding their needs and interests. Here’s a summary of the strongest findings using Pearson’s Correlations to keep you in the loop… (sparing the extensive excel spreadsheets!)

The correlations are given in R values, which range from 0 to 1.  An R value indicates the level of statistical relationship between two data sets. An R value of  “0” would indicate no relationship, while a “1” would be a perfect statistical relationship. The results of these correlations are expressed in the decimals below. If a percentage is expressed rather than a decimal, the statement comes from averages in our data.

Workshops: 

• Newspaper, (22%) Internet searches, ( 36%) and Minneapolis Utility Bill postings (58%) show to be the most influential source of attracting workshop attendees who end up installing raingardens. (2009-2011)

•  We compared the number of folks who forwarded the workshop information on to someone else with the reports of why folks attended the workshop. Correlations showed that attending with hopes to learn about the stormwater fee reduction (.941) and attending because raingardens are beautiful (.943) were the strongest reasons for deciding to forward the information on to someone else.

Onsite Consultations: 

• We examined the number of onsite recipients from 2008-2011, and compared them to the reasons for attending a raingarden workshop. We found that most onsite recipients most attended the workshop because of an in interest in native plants (.84) or attended because raingardens are beautiful. (.97)

• When workshop attendees do request an onsite, they are then on average more likely to install a raingarden (38%), install a rain barrel (17%), and redirect their downspouts (24%) than they are to take no action at all. (2008-2011)