Each year the Victorian Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions (DJSIR) coordinates and auspices State-wide Local Government Community Satisfaction Surveys (CSS) throughout Victorian local government areas, allowing for far more cost-effective surveying than would be possible if councils commissioned surveys individually.
The main objectives of the survey are to assess the performance of councils across a range of measures and to seek insight into ways to provide improved or more effective service delivery. JWS Research has conducted the 2012-2023 community satisfaction surveys for most of the 79 Victorian councils each year.
This has followed a 2012 review of the CSS for the Department, where JWS Research was contracted to provide advice on questionnaire content and survey design for the annual tracking survey. JWS Research also conducted an evaluation survey of the current CSS in 2014.
JWS Research was engaged over eight years ago to transform the survey from a household decision-maker survey to a survey of residents, to gain a better, more representative understanding of community opinion.
Each year, representative samples of a minimum of n=400 people aged 18+ years are interviewed by computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) across each council area, providing a state-wide sample of up to n=30,000 people.