Aberdeen City Council covers a population of 200,000 and is socially diverse with varying local needs. As part of the EU funded DEMOS initiative (www.demos.co.uk), a citizen’s panel was set up to support the opinions of local residents in Aberdeen. Until recently, questionnaires have been limited to a paper based format. The Citizens Panel comprises 1350 residents representing the Citizens of Aberdeen in terms of age, gender, ethnic group and geographical area. It is named the Aberdeen City Voice.
In addition the Council’s second DEMOS project is the establishment of a Virtual Panel which enables Citizens not on the formal Aberdeen City Voice to complete the same questionnaire and send it back on-line. In this way the project intends to test the results of both Panels and identify the type of people who interact on-line and more importantly those groups who are not using this method.
As part of the DEMOS project, Hazel Spalding, Assistant Director for Legal and Democratic Services at Aberdeen City Council, introduced a new initiative to encourage more responses from local residents by offering them the chance to complete surveys over the internet. There were two main issues to address in order to make the project a success: the speed and efficiency at which questionnaires could be developed and response data could be entered, processed and analysed. And secondly a suitable solution for hosting surveys over the web.
Aberdeen City Council had a number of key requirements including cost effectiveness, prompt posting of surveys, easy integration of web survey response data with paper based responses and compatibility of response data with survey analysis and reporting tools.
Hazel explains, “As existing users of SPSS, Aberdeen City Council already knew about the flexibility of SPSS software, their technical expertise and experience of survey analysis within the public sector. What we needed in addition to this was for them to scope out our requirements and develop a tailored transition plan that would also involve giving our team the necessary skills to develop and roll out future surveys.”
The first “Aberdeen City Voice” survey questionnaire was selected for the initial roll-out. This survey formed part of their development plan for distribution at the beginning of January 2003. This questionnaire aimed at finding out how residents felt about where they live, how their services are managed and other aspects of living within the city. Results from the survey could then be used in future decision making to help improve the satisfaction of local residents and improve the effectiveness of local service provision.
SPSS questionnaire design and data entry software for the web was quickly installed and set up at Aberdeen so that for the very first time respondents would be able to submit their responses on-line. Full training was also given to the analyst team so when the on-line component is ready to go live, they would be fully skilled-up to extract and analyse the results.
Once the closure date for the survey had passed, SPSS conducted analysis of the survey responses to provide the council with a summarised report and an insight into how to present survey findings in an easy to interpret format. These learnings could then be applied for future surveys conducted by Aberdeen City Council.
The survey proved to be a huge success in terms of involving the local community with a very high response rate of 73%. “Without the assistance of SPSS the project was looking doubtful. If it had failed then we could have faced loss of funding and the possibility of repaying funds that we had already received”, says Hazel.
"The use of the web for consultation is going to be a large part of Aberdeen City Council's strategy, and without the consultancy given by SPSS this would have never been possible", says Hazel. The internet may well be the mechanism of choice for all future surveys. This will not only mean that the council will be conforming to the directives of e-governance but will also produce savings both in terms of money and time.
Hazel concludes by saying, “The cost of each citizens panel paper survey is about £2000 and we do about three or four of these a year. SPSS has reduced this by half and will have paid for itself in just 2 years. Factor in the other council departments that will be able to use this solution for web consultation and the savings would be even greater.”
The complete list of global SPSS success stories can be found here
“The cost of each
citizens panel paper
survey is about £2000
and we do about three
or four of these a year.
SPSS has reduced this
by half and will have
paid for itself in just 2
years.”
- Hazel Spalding, Assistant
Director for Legal & Democratic
Services, Aberdeen City
Council.
Key Products and Services
Resources
Demos and Downloads
Was this information useful?