Victorian Local Government Community Satisfaction Survey

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.

Every council receives an individualised written report comprising charting inclusive of statistical significance testing, plus a written summary of findings, observations and next steps.

Other deliverables include detailed cross tabulations, SPSS data files, an online dashboard for extra analysis, individual respondent ‘verbatims’ for open ended question responses and personal briefings with councils.

The community satisfaction surveys assist councils in their strategic planning and in fulfilling their statutory community consultation obligations as mandated by the state government.

Some of our innovations include:

  • Up to 45 per cent mobile telephone sample to reflect an increase in mobile-only households across Victoria and increase the number of younger residents interviewed
  • Bespoke council groupings included in reports for analysis and comparison
  • A regression analysis to understand the key drivers of satisfaction
  • Selection of geographical areas within the municipality for further analysis
  • Translation of the survey into up to 12 other languages
  • Personal briefings to councils
  • An online fully interactive dashboard where councils can create their own bespoke analyses and export their results

What we do

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Government relations and advocacy research

Partnering with communications and government relations specialists to understand and leverage public opinion to make a case for or against change.

issues management
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Communications and engagement research

Developmental research, concept testing, refinement and evaluation are crucial to informing your communications plan and maximising the effectiveness of your communications campaign.

Community opinion and satisfaction

Measuring community views and performance ratings of multiple services or performance areas determines the drivers and levels of overall satisfaction among your community and customers.

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Understanding community attitudes, needs and beliefs, leading to informed strategic advice underpins robust policy development and implementation.

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Understanding attitudes and behaviours

Finding out what people think, delving deeper and extracting meaningful insights from complex issues landscapes where what people say, and what people do, may be at odds.

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Campaign ConverterTM is a proven and effective approach to achieving maximum support for your issue by identifying how to motivate target audiences and to address barriers to effective engagement.