CCS Releases Results of Two Surveys: North Country & NYS

The Center for Community Studies (Center) at Jefferson Community College has completed its 26th Annual North Country Survey of the Community.  Additionally, for the first time in their more than quarter-century of public opinion research in Northern New York, the Center completed a statewide sample including all 62 counties, using their longitudinal annual omnibus survey instrument, providing a much deeper understanding and perspective surrounding North Country results. 

The North Country survey is an annual inventory of the attitudes and opinions of a representative sample of North Country adult residents and has been completed by the Center each year in Jefferson County since 2000. The survey expanded to include Lewis County annually in 2007, further expanded to include St. Lawrence County in 2015, and in 2025 has now added Oswego County as a fourth studied “North Country” county.  The primary goal of the survey is to collect data regarding quality-of-life issues of importance to local citizens, and as a result this study provides an annual “snapshot” of life in the North Country.  Additionally, analysis of the 26th Annual Survey data provides an information-rich “motion-picture” of changes in the lives of residents over the past two and a half decades when trends are investigated by examining the results from all twenty-six years of surveying. The longitudinal trended data included in this study summarizes results of over 25,000 interviews that have been completed in a total of 57 county-specific surveys of the community in the four counties since 2000. Additionally, with the use of the same quality-of-life survey instrument from the North Country to interview residents in all 62 of the New York State counties, the Center now has statewide quality-of-life survey data against which the North Country data may be compared.

Between October 21-25, 2025, a mixed-mode sampling method of contact was employed in the North Country study to complete a total of 2,109 interviews of adult residents of the four-county region, with 593 Jefferson County residents, 515 Lewis County residents, 472 Oswego County residents, and 529 St. Lawrence County residents. Working under the supervision of the Center for Community Studies research staff in both a physical call center in Watertown and a virtual remote call center, statistics students enrolled at the College completed 505 live interviews via telephone on both landline and cellular phones of North Country adult residents.  An additional 1,511 surveys were completed online, with 629 via random email invitation and 882 via random MMS text message push-to-web invitations.  Finally, 93 intercept surveys were completed at Fort Drum to assist in attaining accurate representation of the military-affiliated subpopulation in the sample collected in this study.  The resulting margin of error for this sampling of 2,109 North Country residents is ±2.4% after weighting sample survey results toward North Country population characteristics. 

Between November 5-8, 2025, a mixed-mode sampling method of contact was employed in a statewide New York study to complete a total of 1,117 interviews of adult residents of the state. All surveys were completed online, using a random multimedia messaging service (MMS) text message push-to-web invitation, followed by an short message service (SMS-text only) reminder invitation.  The sample was distributed throughout the entire state with 281 New York City residents, 297 residents of Long Island and other NYC suburb counties, and the remaining 539 participants residing in Upstate counties. This New York State sample of 1,117 residents produces an approximate margin of error of ±3.5% after weighting sample survey results toward New York State population characteristics. 

View the highlighted findings and full report here.