Measuring citizen evaluations of services amidst community change.

Abstract

Citizen surveys are increasingly being used by communities to evaluate services; however, previous work suggests that such evaluations of specific services may be influenced by generalization from other attitudes. Surveys repeated annually for 4 years allowed an examination of such possible "contagion" effects since they were done before, during, and after a highly visible, extensive change--court-ordered busing--which engendered intense negative attitudes. Evaluations of busing-related services underwent a significant decline during the onset of busing; evaluations of nonbusing services declined but not significantly, indicating that a contagion effect was not a strong factor. There were also no significant contagion effects on nonbusing services in city and suburban subsamples, nor on neighborhood or community-wide delivery levels. Neighborhood-level services were evaluated significantly more positively than community-wide services each of the 4 years. Rank order evaluations remained stable during the change. It was concluded that citizens do discriminate among services on citizen surveys even in the face of strong attitudes toward community changes, that their evaluations are generally stable over time, and that these are sensitive to at least highly visible program changes.