THE USE OF SURVEYS OF SATISFACTION FOR EVALUATIONS

The use of surveys by cities for planning or evaluation requires attention to several problems identified by users. An assessment of the impact of these issues was made using three surveys by the city of Dallas. It was determined that surveys may be particularly valuable in evaluating service delivery patterns for services which offer delivery agents a high level of discretion. For these services, non-whites reported higher levels of dissatisfaction than whites, a pattern not evident when low discretion services are evaluated. The study also allowed development of specific suggestions regarding the structure of survey questions and the evaluation of services by non-users.