Colorado Springs Receives a Higher Overall Quality of Life Rating in the AskCOS Survey by Elevated Insights than the Country’s Average.
Toward the end of last year, the results of the “AskCOS” survey were released that showed Colorado Springs has a higher quality of life rating than most of the United States. The survey reviewed several metrics that rated how much people enjoy living in the city. The survey also asked several questions about the use of legal substances, religion and what sources of media were used most.
Even though the results showed overall quality of life as high, the findings showed both good news and bad news. The good news is that the survey showed an increase in certain quality of life factors over the last several years such as outdoor recreation/activities, restaurants/food, and entertainment. But there was a decrease in other factors like cost of living/housing and community safety.
AskCOS Survey
According to Debbie Balch, the president of Elevated Insights (the company who conducted the “AskCOS” survey), a similar study has been conducted for the last five years. The Ask COS survey is a shared community survey, so different organizations sponsor different questions that are not shown on these results. Elevated Insights sponsors the quality of life, city satisfaction, and mental/physical health questions to give back to the community. Each year, the company has asked over 1,000 El Paso County residents a list of questions via an online survey.
Since 2021 was the fifth year of conducting the survey, the company decided to release the results with some key findings. “This was the fifth annual survey like this, which is why we went ahead and released the results more publicly and more broadly,” Balch said. “Because after five years under our belt, we are really starting to see some interesting trends and it might help our community to continue to improve to make the information widely available.”
Key Takeaways of the Survey
One main finding in the report is that the overall quality of life has remained higher than the country’s average. The survey results locally were compared to the national average of quality of life which sits at 70 percent. The national average of quality of life was calculated by averaging several similar surveys from several other cities across the country.
Since 2017, some metrics of the quality of life have increased, but others have significantly decreased. The results show that less residents are satisfied with the city’s housing options and cost of living than they were five years ago.
In the end, the survey showed that 86 percent of county residents showed positive ratings when it came to their physical health. And 80 percent of the people surveyed had a positive rating for their emotional well-being.
However, recent surveys have shown a decrease in the residents’ physical and emotional well-being when being compared to the pre-COVID era of 2019 and earlier. The results also say that the emotional well-being of residents between the ages of 19 and 29 has decreased more than that of older citizens.
The results also reflected an increase of marijuana usage by 30 percent in 2021. But the usage of alcohol and cigarettes has decreased since 2017.
In the religious beliefs category, fewer residents claimed that religion is important in their lives than the national average. Over the last five years the number of people saying religion is important has decreased, but the amount of religious participation has remained constant when online participation methods are included.
In 2017, 42 percent said religion was “very important” to them and 23 percent said religion was “fairly important.” In 2021, only 58% of the residents surveyed said religion was important to them with 20 percent saying it was “fairly important” and 38 percent saying religion was “very important.” In 2021, the majority of those interviewed (42 percent), said that religion was “not very important,” versus only 31 percent stating that same answer in 2017.
The survey also found that 15 percent of the people surveyed stay informed about local news and events using non-traditional media sources such as word of mouth, social media, podcasts, and independent online searches. The findings also showed that citizens between the ages of 19 and 29 are less likely to be informed about local news and events.
The Pandemic Could Have Affected Some of the Results
According to Balch, since COVID-19 struck the nation in 2020, some of the results have changed drastically compared to what they were pre-pandemic. Some of the changes in the last couple of years can be attributed to the pandemic, whereas other recent changes could have been caused by other factors.
“Some of the changes we have seen in the last couple of years include a decrease in the emotional well-being especially of our younger residents,” Balch said. “And I also think in the last couple of years we have seen increased concerns over the cost of living, specifically affordable housing. And we have seen less residents being satisfied with their perceived feeling of safety.”
She said that the pandemic could have caused a decrease with the cost-of-living satisfaction rating due to more people moving here after the pandemic since many more people across the country started working from home. She also said that the lowered satisfaction of safety in the community, most likely, has more to do with people’s concerns about crimes against people and property, than it had to do with the pandemic.
Where to go from Here?
The purpose of providing the quality-of-life survey results was to pinpoint things that could be changed to increase the overall quality of life within the city. According to the results report, improving in the categories that have decreased the most recently would directly contribute to an overall increase in the city’s quality of life.
Therefore, any steps that get taken to improve the cost of living/housing situation, community safety, job opportunities and public schools would in turn improve the overall quality of life for residents in the Colorado Springs area for the years to come.
