In June, Albany conducted a community survey, and the response was disappointing. Next time a different method ought to be tried.

The city mailed postcards to 2,000 addresses asking people to go online and answer the survey questions. Some 228 cards came back because they could not be delivered (in 135 cases because the address was vacant).

Of the rest, 150 people actually went online and filled out all or part of the survey. Another 34 asked for paper forms, and 33 of them sent them back. Together, the online and paper responses amounted to a little more than 9 percent of the initial 2000.

The resulting conclusions have a "confidence interval" of plus or minus 7.2 percent. That's not bad for this kind of a survey, but it's not great if the result is supposed to mean something in terms of guiding council policies.

One set of responses should have causes eyebrows to rise.Thirty-two people answered yes to the question of whether they or others in their household had been the victim of a crime in the past year. Next question: Was the crime reported to the police? Twenty said yes and 23 said no. Where did these extra crimes come from?

The council didn't want to spend much money on this survey. The result reinforces conventional wisdom: You get what you pay for.

But not always. There could be a better way for the council to learn what people are experiencing and thinking, and it would cost even less.

A sample of 400 randomly selected people would be all that's needed to be representative of the city population as a whole.

The council has seven members, including the mayor. Each one could take 57 names or so and try to quiz each one in person over, say, three or four months.

That would allow follow-ups such as: "I thought you said you experienced no crime, and now you say you reported it to the police?"

Taking a survey in person is a lot of work. That's why professional pollsters charge what they do.

A personal sampling by council members, all using the same questions, would likely get information just as useful as a professional poll. When they were done, they would know exactly what their constituents think and want. (hh)