Over the past ten years, the City of Arlington has been conducting citizen satisfaction surveys by telephone to gather resident's opinions about city services. This year the City will collect resident's opinions online. Residents selected at random from zip codes across the city will begin receiving postcards in the mail next week inviting them to participate.

The City has partnered with Decision Analyst, an independent market research company based in Arlington, to conduct the anonymous and confidential online survey. The firm has also conducted phone surveys in years past.

"After evaluating the options for conducting the survey in the current fiscal year, it is significantly more efficient in cost savings and survey time to provide the survey online," said Kim Probasco, Arlington's senior management analyst. "We also expect to receive more completed surveys that are representative of the population than in past years."

The selection pool of random respondents consists of all occupied addresses within the City and email databases gathered from various City departments.

"In years past, residents were randomly selected to participate in the citizen satisfaction survey through water bill information," said Probasco. "This year, we took all occupied addresses of residents within the Arlington city limits, broke down the list by zip code, and took a percentage of each zip code to randomly select residents to contact. We also took email distribution lists and randomly selected residents for participation. This allows us to get good representation across the city."

Those randomly selected to complete the survey will be contacted, either by postcard or email, with instructions and login information. Emails are scheduled to be sent on December 21 and postcards are scheduled to be mailed on December 27. The online survey will close on January 10, 2012.

Probasco says the information obtained from the survey provides the City with valuable feedback and she encourages all randomly selected residents to participate.

"If selected to participate in the survey, it is important that we receive completed surveys by the deadline. The survey information obtained tells us how well we deliver services to our residents. It is also used by the City to address potential areas in need of improvement, plan for the next fiscal year, and provide performance management data. We really appreciate the residents taking the time to provide us with this important information."