The State of the State Survey: Nevada (the Survey) is a product of the faculty and students associated with the Public Affairs Ph.D. program of the School of Public Policy and Leadership within the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas [1]. The Survey fosters the Program’s mission to: “… serve as the nexus between the academic community and the world of service and practice in the private, non-profit, and public sectors.”

Thus, the primary purpose of the Survey is to provide the general public and policymakers information on what people in Nevada are thinking in regards to important issues facing Nevada. Another function for the survey is to provide data for academic research including research on survey methodology. Equally important, the survey was conducted to provide doctoral students first-hand experience in designing and implementing a survey.

Consistent with the goal of conducting research on survey methods and training students, the State of the State Survey: Nevada has a number of unique features that are explained in sections below.

Who was surveyed?

A decision was made to conduct the survey using a population of registered voters in Nevada. Voter registration lists provide a wealth of information that enables the implementation of a more manageable set of survey procedures and allows for an evaluation verification of the final data set. More detailed information about the sample and the sample procedures are provided below.

How was the survey conducted?

In order to provide students training on survey methodologies, students developed the questionnaire based on standard questions from years prior and on their specific areas of research.

In survey research there has been a debate over the efficacy of the exact approach to obtain a sufficiently large enough set of returned questionnaires and a high enough response rate to reduce survey error. To teach and test the effects of survey approach, candidates were guided through the survey process to ensure process compliance.

The response rate for the survey was 13.25%. [2]

Topics in the Questionnaire

The major purpose of the survey was to understand what registered voters think about important issues confronting Nevada. To determine the topics to be covered in the survey, students involved in the development of the questionnaire studied statewide surveys conducted at other universities as well as developing their own topics, and questions. The students, as a group, discussed the potential topics and, as a class, determined the relevant topics. As a result, 81 questions were constructed for an eight-page questionnaire. The following broad topical areas have at least one question:

1. Nevada as a place to live
   1. Overall
   2. Personal status
   3. Biggest issues confronting Nevada
   4. Economy
   5. Healthcare
   6. Crime & Safety
   7. Homelessness
2. Education
3. Other Policy Issues
   1. Immigration
   2. Thoughts on the Government
   3. Digital Awareness & Privacy
   4. Public Attitudes on Other Policies
4. Demographics

The exact wording of the questions and format of the questionnaire is presented here. It is expected that some questions will be repeatedly used in future State of the State Survey: Nevada surveys while other topics will be added or deleted as deemed appropriate. It should be noted that for the readers’ ease of interpretation some of the responses are recoded while other response categories are combined.

There were eleven demographic questions, but three important elements were not included on the questionnaire because they were obtained from the voters list: the age of the respondent, the party identification and place of residence. We have eliminated any record of place of residence from the data set to prevent any identification of the respondent. However, we did use residence to place individuals into one of three categories: Clark County, Washoe County, and the rest of the state.

Sample Design

As noted previously, the surveys were drawn from a list of registered voters – thus the population consisted of Nevadan citizens over the age of 18 [3]. The voter registration lists were obtained from the Nevada Secretary of State’s website. The total number of registered voters as of February 2024 was 2,290,361. Of the registered voters, approximately 69.5 percent were located in Clark County, 18 percent lived in Washoe County, and the remaining 12.5% lived in the remaining counties of Nevada. Stratified samples were constructed reflecting the percentage of voters from each of the three sections of the state. The sample reflected the proportion of registered voters and, at least with regard to place of residence, age, and party identification reflect the comprehensive list of registered voters.

Sampling Error

The sampling error can be estimated for each mail survey. We estimate the margin of error, the average margin of error, and the largest margin of error.

Notes