“I’m always asked what’s done with it,” he says. “It’s an important part of the decisionmaking process, especially when preparing the Annual Plan. Councillors get information from people who make submissions, and from the survey.That way they get a good picture of what the people of Christchurch are looking for.”

The survey is done in late March for the Council by the National Research Bureau. The Council sets aside $75,000 to pay for it.The survey sampling — based on a model devised in 1991 by Statistics New Zealand — randomly selects properties that house a good cross section of everyone who makes up the city of Christchurch.

Surveyors go to those homes and do face-toface interviews. According to Mr Harrison, the results have a margin of error of around 3 per cent at the 90% confidence level. “We are 90% confident the results are within 3% of what you would get if you interviewed everyone.

“What that means is you need to see a rise or fall of at least 4.5% to be able to say for sure there’s been a real change over the last year,” he says.

“I think its great value is in the way it shows trends.We’ve been running it since 1991 and many of the questions have been asked every year – things like value for money for rates for various selected services, whether we should be spending more or less on those areas, satisfaction with things like the Council’s libraries and events and festivals.

“That means you are able to see if the level of satisfaction about some issue is steady, or rising over time, or has begun to drop off or if the proportion of people who are unhappy about something is starting to drop.

“The way it’s designed, it’s a very good survey in terms of confidence level – your ability to trust it as an accurate reflection of how people feel.”

The annual survey results, from 1997 and including this year’s results, are on the Council’s website — at www.ccc.govt.nz/residentssurvey