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Citizen survey

type of survey conducted among citizens in a jurisdiction

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 8, 2021
Entity authorityQ1021040
Source-derived summary

A citizen survey is a kind of opinion poll which typically asks the residents of a specific jurisdiction for their perspectives on local issues, such as the quality of life in the community, their level of satisfaction with local government, or their political leanings. Such a survey can be conducted by mail, telephone, Internet, or in person.

Citizen surveys were advanced by Harry Hatry of the Urban Institute, who believed resident opinions to be as necessary to the actions of local government managers and elected officials as customer surveys are to business executives. Local government officials use the data from citizen surveys to assist them in allocating resources for maximum community benefit and forming strategic plans for community programs and policies. Many private firms and universities also conduct their own citizen surveys for similar purposes.

In 1991, the International City and County Manager's Association (ICMA) published a book by Thomas Miller and Michelle Miller Kobayashi titled Citizen Surveys: How To Do Them, How To Use Them, and What They Mean, that directed local government officials in the basic methods for conducting citizen surveys. The book was revised and republished in 2000. In 2001, ICMA partnered with Miller and Kobayashi's organization National Research Center, Inc., to bring The National Citizen Survey, a low-cost survey service, to local governments. National Research Center, Inc. maintains a database of over 500 jurisdictions representing more than 40 million Americans, allowing local governments to compare their cities' results with similar communities nearby or across the nation.

Editorial summary

“Citizen survey” enters the record as type of survey conducted among citizens in a jurisdiction. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Citizen, survey and type can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1991, 2000, 2001—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Citizen, survey and type.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Citizen survey” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Citizen, survey and type provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 8, 2021. The linked authority identifier is Q1021040. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1991, 2000 and 2001.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Citizen survey primary sources, Citizen survey archive and Citizen research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Citizen survey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.