FAQs

Yes. While we want to know the health needs of our community, we also know your privacy is important. The survey links and QR codes do not provide us with tracking information, and we have done all we can to limit questions that may have identifying information in the survey. The CHA report will also not include information which could be used to identify those who took the survey.

To help ensure we are conducting this survey in an ethical way focusing on protecting those taking our survey, we have submitted the survey for Institutional Review Board approval through the University of Montana. 

Each time the community health assessment comes around, the health department has the goal of improving its processes from the previous time.

In 2017, one of the major improvements was conducting a survey focused on the county’s rural communities in addition to the existing survey of residents who used social services, such as the Food Bank, Poverello Center and the Missoula Housing Authority. This year will be the first time the City of Missoula as a community will be surveyed.

The health department plans to use a random, stratified sample for the City of Missoula survey  to obtain the most representative sample from households in the City of Missoula. For rural communities, the survey is open to all households, just as it was in 2017.

In 2017, the health department conducted a survey of rural households open to all residents of Missoula County living outside the city limits. To compare the results of that survey to the results of this year, the survey must be conducted in the same way. This allows the health department to get a more accurate picture of rural health needs and how they’ve changed since the last survey. 

The health department has not conducted a broader survey of City of Missoula residents before. In previous years, staff focused on services assisting vulnerable population groups such as the Food Bank, Poverello Center and Missoula Housing Authority. To maximize the chances of getting an accurate picture of the city’s health needs, and to most efficiently use health department resources, the health department chose to survey parts of the city based on income and their census block groups using a process called Random Stratified Cluster Sampling. To ensure only the households within the areas randomly selected to be surveyed are able to take the survey, staff are sending out a postcard with a code which will allow households in those areas to take the survey.

Unfortunately, the use of a random stratified cluster sample tied to a physical address excludes some populations, such as those experiencing being unhoused. We are in the process of examining how we could better include their experiences as an addendum to this CHA and how to include them in future surveys using the same processes this survey uses.