"A Multiple-Indicator Approach to Municipal Service Evaluation: Correlating Performance Measurement and Citizen Satisfaction across Jurisdictions".

• Author: Williams, W. Anderson
• Position: Performance Measurement - Abstract

Janet M. Kelly and David Swindell

Public Administration Review, September/October 2002, pp. 610- 619.

Citizen satisfaction surveys potentially act as external measures of administrative performance. This article seeks to understand such a possibility by examining the relationship between the survey tool and administrative performance measures. Acknowledging the utility of both citizen surveys and performance measurement, the authors explore whether citizen evaluations contribute significantly to a government's knowledge of service effectiveness and how well they compare to "hard" measures. Findings indicated that some citizen evaluations are correlated with performance measures, while others are not. Overall, there was less correlation between citizen satisfaction and administrative performance measures than expected. Only a weak correlation between outcome-based benchmarks and citizen satisfaction was found. The differences between how administrators and citizens view outcomes might help explain the reasons for these findings. For instance, citizens are more likely...