Media Clipping – April 26, 2001, The Halifax Herald

Survey to sample life in Kings County

By Larry Powell

Greenwich – Is Kings County a good place to live?

A local organization will try to answer that question through an ambitious survey designed to measure community peace, security and well being.

Kings Citizens for Community Development drafted the 50-page survey over two years through consultation with Statistics Canada and collaboration with 40 other community groups.

Starting this week, the group will begin distributing the Kings Well-being Survey to 2,000 randomly selected residents.

The group believes that measuring quality of life through traditional means, such as economic growth, doesn't tell the whole story.

"The survey results will allow County residents, for the time, to assess how they are really doing as a community and whether they are leaving this county a better and more secure place for their children to grow up in," said Ron Colman, director df GPI Atlantic, a non-profit research group working on the survey.

He said economic growth indicators don't tell the whole truth about a community and can often be misleading. "For example, more crime actually makes the economy grow, simply because we spend more money on prisons, police and security systems," he said.

The survey will question residents on a variety of areas, such is health, community service, quality of work life, social support, time use, agriculture, education and the environment. Funding for the survey has come from the National Crime Prevention Centre's Business Action Program, the Rural Secretariat and Human Resources Develpment Canada. The National Crime Prevention Centre views the Kings County as a model for other communities.

"Not only will this benefit Kings County tremendously," said Richard Hennigar, of the community development group, "but it is a pilot project for the whole country - a real first."

Implementation of the survey is headed by project manager Cindy Trudel, who will oversee a team of five co-ordinators and 16 researchers.