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City of Louisville Citizen Survey June 2016 should be examined for improvements or declines. Deviations from stable trends over time especially represent opportunities for understanding how local policies, programs or public information may have affected residents' opinions. In 2004, substantial changes were made to the survey instrument and implementation methodology. The surveys conducted in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 used similar survey instruments and survey methodologies. Comparisons across these more recent years are more robust than comparisons to results from the surveys conducted in 1990, 1994 and 1999. In those first three survey iterations, the question wording and the response scales were often different than question wording and response scales used starting in 2004. The report body notes any differences between the 2012 and 2016 survey instruments. These are minor changes in wording to clarify a question or note a change in a department name. Previous reports contain detailed notes on the more substantial differences between the 2008 and 2004 survey instruments compared to the 1990, 1994 and 1999 survey instruments. Most of the trend lines did not change markedly with the 2004 change in methods and question wording (about 60% of the ratings were similar, 10% went up and 30% went down). However, caution should be used in comparing the newer trend line (2004 to 2016) to the 1990, 1994 and 1999 results. The differences in ratings may be due to real change in practice or policy but also may be affected by the changes in how they were measured (the methods and question wording). Comparing by Respondent Subgroups Selected survey results were compared to certain demographic characteristics of survey respondents as well as by Ward. These crosstabulations are presented in Appendix B: Comparison of Responses by Respondent Demographics. Comparing to Other Jurisdictions NRC's database of comparative resident opinion is comprised of resident perspectives gathered in citizen surveys from approximately 500 jurisdictions whose residents evaluated local government services. Conducted with typically no fewer than 400 residents in each jurisdiction, opinions are intended to represent over 30 million Americans. National and Front Range benchmark comparisons have been provided when similar questions on the Louisville survey are included in NRC's database and there are at least five jurisdictions in which the question was asked, though most questions are compared to more than five other cities across the country or in the Front Range. Additional information on NRC's benchmarking database as well as jurisdictions to which Louisville is compared can be found in Appendix D: Benchmark Comparisons. Where comparisons for quality ratings were available, the City of Louisville's results were generally noted as being "above" the benchmark, "below" the benchmark or "similar" to the benchmark and are discussed throughout the body of the report, when applicable. In instances where ratings are considerably higher or lower than the benchmark, these ratings have been further demarcated by the attribute of "much," (for example, "much less" or "much above "). These labels come from a statistical comparison of Louisville's rating to the benchmark where a rating is considered "similar" if it is within the margin of error (less than two points on the 100 -point scale); "above" or "below" if the difference between Louisville's rating and the benchmark is greater than the margin of error (greater than two points but less than six points); and "much above" or "much below" if the difference between Louisville's rating and the benchmark is more than twice the margin of error (four points or greater). Comparison data for a number of items on the survey is not available in the benchmark database (e.g., some of the city services or aspects of government performance). These items are excluded from the benchmark tables. Report of Results 5 Prepared by National Research Center, Inc.