1990 Citizen Survey Results - Laserfiche WebLink

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INTRODUCTION In fall, 1989, the city of Louisville decided to develop a basic survey in order to evaluate citizen satisfaction with city services and to determine priorities for future action. Since the city had conducted a citizen survey several years ago, it wanted the new survey to be similar enough to the previous survey that changes in attitudes over time could be assessed. Louisville contracted with the Center for the Improvement of Public Management at the University of Colorado, Denver, to help the city design and analyze a citizen survey. Louisville city staff sketched out a draft survey which specified in rough form the questions they wanted included. Working from the draft, the Center designed a survey containing questions about city services, budget priorities, economic development, transportation, quality of life and respondent demographics. Within a given topic, specific questions were developed to meet two basic goals: (1) comparability with questions from Louisville's previous survey and (2) to elicit reliable information about a broad range of current issues that are of interest to the city. The questions were fairly standard in both content and form. The second draft was reviewed by past and present City Council members, and revised to incorporate their suggestions as well as those of city staff. Every effort was made to keep both the questions and the response categories as unbiased as possible, and we feel that the survey is successful in this regard. The Center was also asked to oversee the sampling methodology, analyze the data and produce a written report of research results. The following section describes the methodology in some detail. Then, section three summarizes the survey results in both written and table format. Finally, there is an appendix which presents the actual survey questions and indicates the percentage of respondents who gave each possible response. METHODOLOGY Both budgetary and time limitations were imposed on this project. The total cost allotted was approximately $6000, including printing, mailing and data processing, and the survey results had to be available by early January, 1990. For these reasons, we decided to conduct a mail survey because it is a quick, inexpensive way to collec information. In addition, it ensures complete anonymity to respondents. The only drawback of a mail survey is the relatively low response 1