City Services Satisfaction Survey 2012 City Services Satisfaction Survey | Page 83

Introduction
The City of Arlington conducts a citizen satisfaction survey annually to gauge the opinion of residents on city
service delivery. The annual citizen satisfaction survey provides crucial information on City services and
programs. The data obtained is necessary for our performance management program and assists the Mayor and
Council in determining community priorities and resource allocation.
The citizen satisfaction survey is a large project requiring logical question preparation covering all customer
service areas of the City and the International City/County Management Association Center for Performance
Measurement (ICMA CPM) requirements. The City completed the FY 2012 survey questioning in January with
tabulation of data and trending completed in February.
This report is a supporting document. The final report provided by Decision Analyst has a comprehensive view of
the survey results. Please see the final report for further information not provided in this document.
Methodology
In an effort to provide a representative sampling of the demographics in Arlington, valid data, and trend
analysis, OMB staff recommended a different data gathering methodology than in the past. Over the past
decade, the City utilized the services of Decision Analyst, a local market research firm, to gather data through
CATI (computer assisted telephone interview) methodology for the citizen satisfaction survey. While this
method was the most efficient and cost-effective for many years, it became outdated. Issues associated with
the CATI survey included fewer persons using a home telephone number and the length of the survey when
conducted by telephone interviews. The response from populations of 18 – 35 year olds was difficult to obtain
due to the lack of a home telephone number. Also, the survey interview was very long (~25 minutes) by
telephone, which discouraged participation. Additionally, households were contacted utilizing information
obtained from water bills. This reduced the representation across the City for residents that do not live in a
house or have a water bill. All issues mentioned created difficulty in obtaining the data needed for a
representative sample and created a catalyst for the City to make a methodology change to online surveying.
The survey continued to be processed through Decision Analyst, however, the cost was reduced $7,000 by
putting the survey instrument online and placing the greater amount of burden for resident contact on a City
staff person rather than hiring telephone interviewers.
Marketing the Survey:
Community Development and Planning was requested to produce a list of residences in the city that were
occupied so that random sampling could be performed. The list produced 172,039 addresses. From these
residences, City staff performed the random selection process to obtain 5,052 addresses for postcards to be
mailed out. City staff also utilized 24,922 randomly selected emails (from a pool of approximately 50,000
emails) from email distribution lists in the Library and Parks departments to request participation in the online
survey. Password controls were put in place to allow limited access to the survey and specific location addresses
(relating to zip code and council district) reduced the ability for non residents to participate.
Due to the methodology change, a greater amount of residents participated in the FY 2012 survey process and
the representation across the city was greater. In FY 2011, a total of 92,685 calls were made to obtain 309
complete telephone interviews among Arlington residents. In FY 2012, 29,974 invitations were processed and
537 surveys produced, indicating participation at 173% in FY 2012 over FY 2011.
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