Gregg G. Van Ryzin

Pieces of a Puzzle: Linking Government Performance, Citizen Satisfaction, and Trust

This article presents a basic conceptual framework for investigating the relations among government performance, citizen satisfaction, and trust. It then reviews results from a number of previous empirical studies by the author and other investigators that shed light on specific linkages suggested by the framework. It also indicates gaps in knowledge and, thus, promising areas for future research on the question of how citizens respond to good or bad government performance. Implications for public management, including the need for more citizen-driven measures of government performance, are discussed.This article presents a basic conceptual framework for investigating the relations among government performance, citizen satisfaction, and trust. It then reviews results from a number of previous e...

Explaining the Race Gap in Satisfaction with Urban Services

Although racial differences in satisfaction with urban services have been observed for decades, perhaps the most consistent finding in the literature on citizen satisfaction and urban service delivery, little systematic effort has been directed at explaining this gap. Using two years of survey data from New York City, the authors find that socioeconomic status (SES) and neighborhood of residence explain only a small part of the gap in satisfaction across a range of urban services. Residents’ trust of government appears to account for a fairly large proportion of the race gap. Still, significant differences in satisfaction remain between Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics for a number of services even after controlling for SES, neighborhood, and trust.

Performance Measures and Parental Satisfaction With New York City Schools

The public administration literature has consistently questioned the validity of satisfaction surveys as a measure of government performance, particularly in comparison with more objective official measures. The authors examine this objective-subjective debate using unique data from a large survey distributed to nearly 1 million parents of children in the New York City public schools along with officially reported measures of school performance for about 900 schools. Their results suggest that the official measures of school performance are significant and important predictors of aggregate parental satisfaction, even after controlling for school and student characteristics. They conclude that public school parents form their satisfaction judgment in ways that correspond fairly closely with officially measured school performance. The results can also be interpreted as suggesting that the official performance measures reflect, at least in part, aspects of public schooling that matter to parents.

Migration consequences of welfare reform

In this paper, we investigate whether or not recent state and federal changes in welfare policy -- the imposition of time-limited benefits, the use of financial sanctions for non-compliance, and the setting of strict work eligibility rules -- affect the migration of low-educated unmarried women. Estimates of welfares effect on migration reveal that welfare policy does indeed affect migration. Recent changes in policy that have made public assistance a less attractive alternative are associated with greater migration among low-educated unmarried women. Welfare reform has motivated low-educated women to move greater distances more frequently, and to combine such moves with employment. Estimates also indicate that welfare reform is associated with more local (i.e., within county) changes in residential location that are associated with employment, although estimates of this effect were not robust to estimation method. The close link between residential moves and employment in the post-reform period is consistent with the idea that welfare reform has motivated people to move for economic reasons such as better employment opportunities. This evidence suggests that the traditional way of thinking about the effect of welfare on migration -- as a strategic move to obtain higher benefits -- is inadequate.

Web and Mail Surveys: An Experimental Comparison of Methods for Nonprofit Research

This study aims to compare two widely used methods of original data collection in nonprofit research: web and mail surveys. We employ an experimental design to assign a web-based survey and a mail survey to nonprofit professionals working in human services organizations in New Jersey. We then compare responses generated from the two survey methods in terms of response rates and data quality. Our study finds that the mail survey achieved a significantly higher response rate than the web survey, and data obtained from the mail survey produced higher internal consistency than that obtained from the web survey. There was no difference between methods, however, in respondent characteristics, the completeness of the survey, and the percentage of missing items. Taken together, the findings suggest that a mail survey, although more costly, may have response-rate and data-quality advantages over a web survey as a methodology for gathering data from nonprofit organizations.

Benchmarks and Citizen Judgments of Local Government Performance: Findings from a survey experiment

Government agencies can provide various benchmarks when reporting their performance to citizens, but not much is known about how citizens understand and respond to benchmarking information. Thus, this study aims to test what performance benchmarks appear most salient and persuasive to citizens. We conducted an online survey experiment in which n = 595 respondents were randomized to different benchmarking information concerning fourth-grade reading proficiency of an elementary school. Our findings suggest that better school performance relative to the overall state average influenced respondents’ ratings more than did performance relative to last year or similar schools. Improvement over last year, moreover, appears to be the least influential benchmark. The implication is that citizens find broad, comparative benchmarks to be the most persuasive and view reflexive benchmarks as less impressive, although confirmation of this conclusion is needed because of limitations in the design of the experiment.

Are Performance Management Practices Associated With Better Outcomes? Empirical Evidence From New York Public Schools

Performance management is widely assumed to be an effective strategy for improving outcomes in the public sector. However, few attempts have been made to empirically test this assumption. Using data on New York City public schools, we examine the relationship between performance management practices by school leaders and educational outcomes, as measured by standardized test scores. The empirical results show that schools that do a better job at performance management indeed have better outcomes in terms of both the level and gain in standardized test scores, even when controlling for student, staffing, and school characteristics. Thus, our findings provide some rare empirical support for the key assumption behind the performance management movement in public administration.

Validity of an On-Line Panel Approach to Citizen Surveys

On-line panels of volunteer respondents have emerged as a new method of conducting surveys for market and public opinion research with substantial cost and logistical advantages over traditional mail or telephone surveys. However, because they are not based on probability sampling, the results from on-line panels raise serious concerns about their validity in terms of representing the characteristics or views of the population. With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the CivilPanel (formerly eTownPanel) project was created to test the validity of an on-line panel approach to citizen surveys about government performance. This article reports on the development of the project, including the growth and composition of the panel, and on the validity of its on-line survey results as defined by comparisons with established, randomsample surveys of public opinion. Implications of the findings for the practice of citizen surveys as well as for the study of public opinion about local government performance are discussed.On-line panels of volunteer respondents have emerged as a new method of conducting surveys for market and public opinion research with substantial cost and logistical advantages over traditional mail or telephone surveys. However, because they are not based on probability sampling, the results from on-line panels raise serious concerns about their validity in terms of representing the characteristics or views of the population. With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the CivilPanel (formerly eTownPanel) project was created to test the validity of an on-line panel approach to citizen surveys about government performance. This article reports on the development of the project, including the growth and composition of the panel, and on the validity of its on-line survey results as defined by comparisons with established, randomsample surveys of public opinion. Implications of the findings for the practice of citizen surveys as well as for the study of public opinion about local government performanc...

Impact of Government Funding on Donations to Arts Organizations A Survey Experiment

Many nonprofits rely on private donations and government grants, but it is still unclear how these sources of funding may interact or even influence each other. To examine the behavioral aspect of the crowding-out hypothesis, we conducted an online survey experiment (n = 562) to test if government funding of a hypothetical nonprofit would influence donations. Our results show that a nonprofit with government funding, compared to an identical hypothetical organization without government funding, received 25% less in average donations (US

Factors Related to Self‐Sufficiency in a Distressed Public Housing Community

35 vs. US