Citizen survey

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A citizen survey uses the same sampling techniques and faces the same threats to validity as opinion polls but polls tend to test resident opinions about political issues or candidates. Citizen surveys, whether conducted by mail, phone, in-person or on the Web typically provide to local government leaders resident perspectives about quality of community life and local government services, measures of resident engagement in community activities, respondents' consensus about their trust in local officials and their satisfaction with the direction that their community is headed. Citizen surveys were advanced by Harry Hatry of The Urban Institute, who understood resident opinions to be as important to local government managers and elected officials as customer surveys were to the executives and boards of businesses. The International City and County Manager's Association (ICMA) published a book in 1991 and a revised copy in 2000 that offered local government officials the basic "how-to" of citizen surveying in Citizen Surveys: How to do them, how to use them, what they mean, by Thomas Miller and Michelle Miller Kobayashi. In 2001, ICMA partnered with National Research Center, Inc., whose principals were the authors of the citizen survey book to bring The National Citizen Survey(tm), a high quality, low cost survey service, to local governments. Scores of private firms and universities conduct citzen surveys, as well.

Local government officials most often use citizen survey results to monitor residents' perspectives about local government performance, to help elected officials make stragic plans for community programs and policies and to reallocate limited resources so that service quality is maximized. With a database of over 500 jurisdictions representing more than 40 million Americans, The National Citizen Survey(tm) permits local governments to understand their local results in the context of residents' perspectives from surveys conducted across the U.S. so that, for example, opinions of the quality of street repair service at home can be compared to ratings of street repair service given by residents in scores of similar communities nearby or across the country.