Translate & Disseminate Research Findings
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IIHR translates research into plain-language summaries, visual materials, peer-reviewed publications, workshops, and presentations. We help partners share clear, actionable findings with communities, agencies, and funders.
Research Communication in Practice
A Letter for Local Decision-Makers
IIHR wrote to the Novato City Council about the limits of a community survey on cannabis storefronts. The letter translated concerns about recruitment, representativeness, and survey design into plain language and recommended more inclusive data collection before drawing conclusions for the wider community.
Independent Research Briefs
A proposed scope with Marin Healthy Youth Partnerships describes short, plain-language briefs that would assess the quality and limits of research, provide citable findings, and state clearly when evidence is mixed or uncertain. The researcher would retain independence over the conclusions.
READ THE FULL LETTER
March 23, 2026
To Whom it May Concern,
My name is Michaela George and I am the co-founder and chairperson of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Health Research (IIHR), a newly formed non-profit serving Marin. We are a group of academics with scientific backgrounds in epidemiology, public health, health behavior, and social psychology. We have collaborated with several community based organizations in Marin to offer research expertise and data services. One of our central objectives is to formulate recommendations that are specific; feasible and realistic given available resources; backed by data, research, and existing evidence.
In line with these objectives, we have worked with Marin Healthy Youth Partnerships on several projects over the past year. Through this relationship, we were made aware of a survey in the city of Novato seeking to understand if residents were in support or in opposition to opening cannabis storefronts. There was a survey that was available on a third party website hosted by OpenGov. To our knowledge, this survey has been open for several weeks, set to close today, March 23rd. At the time we are writing this letter, there are 287 registered responses and 497 unregistered responses. This third party organization has made only the registered responses available for independent analysis. Given the information on the website, we cannot understand how data tracking is designed and have questions about the validity of the responses available on the public facing website.
Moreover, we are not aware of any advertising the city has done to promote this survey or evidence-based sampling techniques taken to ensure a generalizable sample of Novato residents. Was there an announcement made in the local paper, flyers placed at local gathering centers, was there an announcement on a local radio station that alerted residents that this important information was being requested by the city of Novato? Without evidence-based data collection methods, this survey cannot be considered scientifically conducted.
In reviewing the results prior to the final deadline, we can see that the sample over support and opposed residents has a bimodal distribution. Again, this screenshot was taken on Monday March 23rd, a few hours from the data collection deadline. This histogram contains 287 of the registered respondents.
Survey graphic in the original letter: In general, do you support or oppose allowing cannabis storefront retail businesses in Novato?
| Response | Percent | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Strongly support | 66.9% | 192 |
| Somewhat support | 8.0% | 23 |
| No opinion/don’t care | 0.3% | 1 |
| Somewhat opposed | 2.4% | 7 |
| Strongly opposed | 22.3% | 64 |
From analyzing the above graphic, it is obvious that the distribution of responses follows a bimodal distribution. There are two larger peaks in the histogram – one for “strongly support” and another for “strongly opposed”. This suggests that the evidence is from two different populations and not representative of the general population of Novato. To put this in non-epidemiology jargon, this is similar to a Yelp Review. You are more likely to respond to a survey if you are very fond or very displeased with your experience. Most Yelp Reviews are missing the general population who had a fine time, nothing really to write a review about, no strong feelings, and not worth the reviewer’s time. It is very important to consider the lack of an evidence-based sampling strategy was likely at fault. Without a representative sample, generalizability is impossible. It is our professional opinion that making community based recommendations with this data would be biased and misleading.
Other issues we noticed about the data collected was the small sample size and overall scope of the questions in the survey. According to the most recent census, the size of Novato is over 50,000 residents, with about 41,000 adults (age 18+). With only 287 “registered” respondents, of which only 255 were Novato residents, this represents 0.5% of the total adult population in Novato. With this small sample size, we would discourage making policy changes that would impact the larger population. Secondly, we question the validity and reliability of the survey questions posed throughout the survey. The survey does not adequately cover public health concerns of cannabis storefronts, but rather focuses on regulatory questions.
We would be more than happy to discuss this further with the Novato City Council and staff and help to correct this data collection error with more inclusive sampling techniques to reach a wider and more representative population of Novato before making decisions about cannabis store front businesses.
Sincerely,
Michaela F. George, PhD, MPH
Co-Founder and Chairperson
www.iihrmarin.org