Councillors receive information on city surveys during brief committee meeting

By MEDICINE HAT NEWS on December 3, 2025.

newsdesk@medicinehatnews.com

To help recently elected councillors Cheryl Phaff, Yusuf Mohammed and Brian Varga moving forward with strategic planning, city staff provided information on how scientific community surveys are conducted in Medicine Hat during an Audit Committee meeting Tuesday.

Since 2022 the city has conducted two community surveys by Ipsos, a market research company that claims to deliver reliable information through its random phone surveys as well as online surveys.

Staff intended to provide councillors with the results from the 2022 and 2024 community surveys in the New Year to provide useful background information, while looking ahead to conducting another survey in 2026.

The goal is to switch the two-year survey period to run again in 2027, this would offset the two-year survey cycle and allow new results to be provided to councillors following the next municipal election in 2029.

Councillors were told the city conducts the survey with the same baseline questions to use as a benchmark indicator.

“But there’s a bit of room for some customization depending on what the needs of council are that year,” said Colleen Graham, director of communications, who explained Ipsos wants to keep the length of the surveys manageable for random telephone surveys that are used as representative samples.

These surveys are conducted with 400 random citizens of Medicine Hat, which is considered the representative survey sample size for a city as large as Medicine Hat.

The survey is also opened up to the rest of the community online, however, those results are reported separately.

“We also just try to inform the public that Ipsos will be making phone calls as well and that it’s not a scam and if you have the time take the chance to participate in that survey,” explained Graham.

Coun. Varga expresses his desire to see as many members of the community as possible participate in the survey, however staff say scientific results do not require more than 400 participants.

“I really need to impress the 400 survey size sample from Ipsos, that is scientific, so the volume is not nearly as important as that random select representation,” added Graham.

In 2022, 298 residents participated in the community surveys online and in 2024, 509 residents took the online survey in addition to the 400 random telephone surveys.

The 2025 financial audit of the city is underway as preliminary testing began last week. Auditors are expected back in late February to do more testing and complete their field audit process.

Those financial statements will be presented at an Audit Committee meeting in April when auditors will relieve their findings before heading to council for approval.

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