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Interviewers attended a training course - a half-day course for the department's existing trained interviews, with an additional day's training for those new to the department.
Interviews were carried out face-to-face at respondents' homes, by 32 interviewers, between 26 April and 24 May.
Once contact had been made at a household, a responsible adult was interviewed to get some basic information about each person and select the respondent. The Household Form was used to record that information (see appendix B).
The respondent was selected using a procedure designed to avoid interviewer bias. Eligible members of the household were put into order of age, with the oldest being given the position 1. On each household form there was a randomly generated table that gave, for each possible number of eligible people present, one specified position in the age order. The person who was in that position in the age order was the selected respondent.
The survey undertaken in 1991, 1992 and 1993 comprised a set of 65 questions which were consistent over the three years to allow measurement of changes in performance from year to year. In addition, there were a further 10 questions each year to collect information on topical, "one-off" issues of interest to the Council.
In developing the questionnaire for the 1994 and subsequent surveys, and in order to cover a wider range of topics, a different approach was taken. The questionnaire included:
(a) a set of questions which will be standard over the years 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997. This will allow for measurement of changes in performance as for the previous survey;
(b) bi-annual questions which will be asked in 1994 and 1996 with different questions developed for 1995 and 1997; and
(c) supplementary questions which will differ from year to year and will collect information on topical "one-off" issues.
The questionnaire for 1997 comprised 81 questions ranging over 29 topics. These covered the Christchurch City Council's main areas of service delivery. Refer to Appendix A. The question type - standard, bi-annual and supplementary, were interspersed throughout the 29 topics. The final questionnaire was produced after repeated consultation with the Council.
Changes in wording and in the order of questions may affect the response patterns of respondents, particularly for attitudinal surveys. Due to changes in wording of core questions between 1994, 1995 , 1996 and 1997, and changes to the order of some questions between 1994, 1995 , 1996 and 1997, the user should be wary when making comparisons between these years.
A Rating Sheet was produced for every address in the sample. This showed the approximate rates for the address and the amount from those rates spent on each of the 17 items in question 79(see Appendix C).