Growth Analysis 1.0

What people think about Boise’s growth

How Analysis Posts Work

In our analysis, we take a deeper look at our survey results and highlight the patterns and insights we find under the surface using segmentation across meaningful demographics (like age, gender, or location).

But when you slice the data like that, you need to be careful that you don’t have too few responses in each group. You don’t want to draw the wrong interpretations because the few you got were from weirdos (😜).

That’s why we’re now following a rule of thumb that we won’t do any segmentation with <50 responses in a survey. With your help spreading the word about us, we can grow to the point where we always have enough.

But we’re not going to leave you hanging either. When we don’t have enough responses for segmentation, we’ll still provide our take on the overall results. They’re still fascinating! And we’re happy to theorize with you. 🤔

And now, to the main event…

Boise Growth

We’ve been surveying about Boise growth, and we published the results here. Since then, more responses have flowed in, and we’re ready to take a deeper dive using segmentation — looking at patterns within groups, not just overall.

Growth — good or bad?

We asked a bunch of interesting questions in the survey, but in this post we’re going to focus mostly on whether you think growth is a good or bad thing. The overall results look like this —

More votes for Better than Worse

Everyone already has that view already, but now we’re going to show you what insights we found below the surface… (drumroll please…)

Boise natives like growth more than transplants

If you grew up in or around Boise, you’re more likely to consider growth a good thing. If you grew up somewhere else, you’re less likely.

If you moved to Boise because it’s smaller than the big city you came from, you probably don’t want Boise to change much from the characteristics that brought you here. If you grew up here, you might be accustomed to the growth by now and more able to focus on the positives.

Natives were overwhelmingly positive. Non-natives less so.

Younger folks are also more optimistic

If you’re a young person in Boise, you’re probably way more optimistic about growth. A big part of this seems to be increased career opportunities. And that’s despite the fact that young folks are the most concerned about affordable housing. Makes sense — many of them are probably trying to buy their first houses.

20s and 30s responded “Much better” or “Better” way more often

Men are more tolerant of a bigger city

Ok, I’m changing gears on you now. We’re looking at answers to the question “At what size do you think the Boise area would be too big?”

I didn’t expect to see this, but men seem more tolerant of much larger population sizes than women. The fact that more men prioritized career opportunities than women seems to support that. I’ll keep my eye on this one as we get more responses.

Over half the men said 1,000,000 people in the Boise area wouldn’t be too big

Anti-Californian sentiments overblown?

One of the bigger themes in the open-ended question of “About Boise growth, what do people pay too much attention to?” was “Californians.” And these weren’t Californians that were saying that — all of those comments were from Boise natives, and they weren’t just the positive young ‘uns either. Maybe we need to stop making a big deal about that?

That’s all folks!

If you want more analysis goodness, check out our other posts in the Analysis section.