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Last week, we did something a little bit different. We’ve asked for our readers opinions before — the proof is on the number of letters to the editor that we run on our opinion page — but last week we changed the format in how we asked for the community’s thoughts.

For the first time, The LaGrange Daily News put together a community survey, asking how people were feeling about the COVID-19 pandemic. We don’t think the results were particularly surprising, but they provided a real look at how people in our community are feeling.

The answers are a week old now, but most people who participated were pretty worried about COVID-19 and more than 80 percent said they wouldn’t dine-in at a restaurant any time soon. Obviously, a lot changes day-by-day and hour-by-hour during the pandemic, so those results could’ve changed a bit now.

We were encouraged by the number of people who participated, and we decided we should do another — more in-depth — survey on COVID-19, so we created a second survey.

If you go to our Facebook page, there are numerous posts with instructions on how to take the survey, which takes about five minutes to complete. No identifying information is required.

This survey asks questions about how employers have responded to the pandemic, the media and general questions about how people are feeling about COVID-19. For the most part, the questions are different from last week’s survey.

Obviously, surveys are only useful is a large number of people participate. We’re limiting participation to people who say that they live or work in Troup County, though most of the results last week were from people who both live and work here.

Approximately 1 percent of Troup County’s population participated last week, and we’d like to see an even larger number take part this time around.

We’d also like to continue doing surveys in the future, moving past COVID-19. But for now, that’s the topic we think most people want information on, and we want to hear what you think.

Please email us at news@lagrangenews.com if you have any trouble trying to locate or take the survey. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to respond.