Laserfiche WebLink
User Guide to The National Citizen SurveyT" <br />Response Scale <br />The scale on which respondents are asked to record their opinions about service and community quality <br />is "excellent," "good," "fair" or "poor" (EGFP). This scale has important advantages over other scale <br />possibilities (very good to very bad; very satisfied to very dissatisfied; strongly agree to strongly <br />disagree, as examples). EGFP is used by the plurality of communities conducting citizen surveys across <br />the U.S. The advantage of familiarity was one that NRC did not want to dismiss when crafting The NCS <br />questionnaire, because elected officials, staff and residents already are acquainted with opinion surveys <br />measured this way. EGFP also has the advantage of offering three positive options, rather than only <br />two, over which a resident can offer an opinion. While symmetrical scales often are the right choice in <br />other measurement tasks, NRC has found that ratings of almost every local government service in <br />almost every community tend, on average, to be positive (that is, above the scale midpoint). Therefore, <br />to permit finer distinctions among positively rated services, EGFP offers three options across which to <br />spread those ratings. With questions worded for EGFP, responses are more neutral because they <br />require no positive statement of service quality to judge (as agree- disagree scales require) and, finally, <br />EGFP intends to measure absolute quality of service delivery or community quality (unlike satisfaction <br />scales which ignore residents' perceptions of quality in favor of their report on the acceptability of the <br />level of service offered). <br />19 <br />