Many systems exist that can rate, rank, score, and categorize topics. The Action Plan Survey uses a scheme that asks the respondent to prioritize each topic or issue by selecting an option from a drop-down menu. This method was chosen to provide the greatest flexibility to the respondent and make the survey as painless as possible.

Other prioritization schemes (such as ranking, scoring out of 100, etc.) could be used for a specialized and experienced audience to get a more sophisticated analysis. With 14 topics (originally 13), however, scoring systems were met with resistence. The task seemed too onerous for a large audience and one should take care when claiming that the survey is intended to reach beyond the "usual crowd,"-- the prioritization scheme should be accessible to the general public.

Respondents were asked not to rank more than 1 topic as "Highest" and to mark "Don't Know" if they felt uncomfortable or unqualified in answering. Only 15 of the total 60 disegarded these instructions and marked more than 1 topic as "Highest."

See Analysis for an explanation of how these answers were transformed into quantitative data and Survey Results for interpretation of the data.