David Swindell

A multiple-indicator approach to municipal service evaluation: Correlating performance measurement and citizen satisfaction across jurisdictions

Early work on municipal service–quality assessment recommended multiple measures of performance from both providers and users. Citizen satisfaction surveys have rivaled their more quantitative counterpart, administrative performance measures, in adoption, but the implication of survey results for action is not well understood by managers or scholars. To achieve meaningfully integrated multiple measures of service quality, we need to explore the dimensions of citizen satisfaction and review patterns of satisfaction across localities. We also need to understand the relationship between administrative performance measures and citizen perceptions. This cross–sectional analysis of municipal citizen satisfaction and performance benchmark data suggests that citizen satisfaction survey results are useful to managers in conjunction with performance–measurement programs as part of a multiple–indicator approach to evaluating municipal service quality. However, understanding citizen perceptions requires a different perspective than that applied to administrative service performance measurement.

Service quality variation across urban space: First steps toward a model of citizen satisfaction

There is currently a strong focus on alternative service delivery models and improved government service in the urban and public administration fields. A key aspect of this has been the institutionalization of performance measurement and benchmarking as core tools necessary to reinvent government and make agencies run like businesses. However, the focus on performance measurement has been limited to evaluations of inputs and outputs. Advocates have not successfully tackled the more difficult challenge of integrating good internal measures with service outcomes, which can best be measured by soliciting feedback from the customer through citizen surveys. In this article, we examine 96 neighborhoods across 12 cities and counties and find significant variation in the distribution of service satisfaction outcomes. We argue that such neighborhood– level feedback is useful and illustrates the importance to administrators of disaggregating traditional performance measures to the same neighborhood level to target scare resources more effectively where needed.

Issue Representation in Neighborhood Organizations: Questing for Democracy at the Grassroots

In this era of government reinvention and devolution, some have expressed interest in applying that logic to the local level by including neighborhood associations among the mechanisms for delivering urban services. However, if decision-making authority were to be decentralized to a greater extent, there is the possibility that the decisions of these organizational participants might not be reflective of the group they are supposed to represent. This article seeks to examine the issue representation ability of neighborhood associations. Using a unique neighborhood-level dataset from Indianapolis, this analysis reveals how representative the organization’s activities are in terms of the issues that are of most importance to residents (other participants and non-participants). In addition, the article presents and tests a model to explain differences in the levels of representation. The findings raise concerns with the wisdom of such devolution as well as highlight the environmental and organizational characteristics that influence issue representation.

The Case For The Inexperienced User: Rethinking Filter Questions in Citizen Satisfaction Surveys

Most citizen satisfaction surveys use filter questions to limit satisfaction responses to only those citizens with direct, personal experience with the service. The resulting small response set is inherently problematic, but no more so than the loss of valuable data on the expectations of service satisfaction from citizens who do not use the service. Borrowing a theoretical framework from the consumer satisfaction literature, this article identifies differences in the mean service satisfaction between inexperienced and experienced users of four common local government services (police, fire, emergency medical, and parks). The authors conclude that both experienced and inexperienced users have important information about service quality for local policy makers, especially when the satisfaction results can be disaggregated by neighborhood. Recommendations for modifying common citizen survey practice follow from the findings.

THE EFFECTS OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT AND OPENING OF LIGHT RAIL TRANSIT STATIONS ON NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME

ABSTRACT: The debate over crime and rail transit focuses on whether such investments “breed” criminal activities with new targets of opportunity or transport crime from the inner city to the suburbs. Yet, little empirical evidence exists on whether new rail transit actually does lead to increased crime rates around stations. In order to study this question, we test the relationship between crime and rail transit with the 2007 opening of the Charlotte light rail line. We use Geographical Information Systems software and micro-level data on reported crimes to generate measures of criminal activity in and around light rail transit (LRT) stations. We then implement a quasi-experimental before-and-after methodology using two alternate transit corridors to control for differences between neighborhoods that contain LRT stations and other neighborhoods. We find light rail does not actually increase crime around stations. Instead, we see a decrease in property crimes once the station locations are announced, which remains relatively stable after the light rail begins operating.

Collaborative Service Delivery What Every Local Government Manager Should Know

Local government managers continue to face an array of challenges that have created the opportunity for new and innovative ways to achieve high quality and less expensive service delivery in their communities. Many such innovative efforts have emerged as part of some form of collaboration by the local governmental jurisdiction with private, nonprofit, or other public entities. This article provides a perspective to highlight important factors local officials should bear in mind in deciding which services might benefit from such collaborations, as well as which form of collaboration might be most likely to help a community achieve its goals.

Multigenerational approaches to civic engagement: Findings from a panel study

This paper presents a panel study on the outcomes of a national, volunteer-driven demonstration project. The Legacy Corps for Health and Independent Living program expanded to include multigenerational approaches as one aspect of attracting and involving baby Bbomers into voluntary activities supporting critical community needs. Legacy Corps includes a panel study tracking more than 1,500 participants. Outcome measures compare multigenerational teams versus single volunteers over the age of 50 and assess changes in community attachment and ongoing civic engagement. Analysis indicates improved attachment and increased community contribution postproject. Implications focus on how evidence-based demonstrations with long-term follow-up can inform legislation.

Doing Better: Sports, Economic Impact Analysis, and Schools of Public Policy and Administration

Abstract Consultants on economic impact projects face a challenge in terms of measuring the estimated benefits of such projects, particularly when they are promoted within a heightened, politicized context, as is often the case with the sports facilities. Supporters and opponents of such projects hire consultants (public and private) to measure the value of the investment, which is frequently couched as an economic impact assessment. This often leads to conflicting conclusions, with significant divergences in the measured value of the project. We use a comparative case study to highlight how this happens, and to illustrate for public policy and administration scholars how the lessons for conducting such analyses are lost on policy students, and also are reflected as bad or useless knowledge in the communities they serve.

Mayors, Accomplishments, and Advancement

This article examines the effects of accomplishments on the career paths of big-city mayors. Using data from 104 cities with populations over 160,000 from 1992 to 2012, this study examines the extent to which performance in economics, crime, and recruiting mega-events affects mayors’ decisions to seek reelection or other offices, or retire. Results indicate those mayors of cities with population growth, a decrease in the crime rate, and that host certain mega-events (presidential nominating conventions) are more likely to seek another office than other mayors. A decrease in the crime rate seems to help mayors win reelection while none of the other accomplishments appear to improve their chances of winning campaigns for other offices.

Conducive Macro-Contexts Influencing Volunteering

This chapter reviews research on variables that affect rates of formal volunteering in various sets of territories (nations, provinces/states, counties/districts, communities), usually doing multilevel statistical modeling that simultaneously controls relevant, respondent-variables at the level of individuals. Most attention is given to country-level variables regarding macro-context effects. Results have been less consistent than at the individual level of analysis. At the country level, volunteering rates (referring hereinafter always to formal volunteering/FV) tend to be higher for nations with stronger current democracies, longer time as democracies, more welfare state expenditures per capita, higher and more Protestant religiosity, higher levels of average education, and higher gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. But being part of the Eastern (former communist) Bloc in Europe is a negative factor. In communities, often with inconsistent results, ethnic–racial heterogeneity has negative effects. Special methodological issues are discussed.