Find information about

Section 3 Issues and concerns in research and consultation

3.06 Measuring change over time

Any social housing organisation is likely to be interested in trends in performance over time. See Moray Council for example. It is important to consider how central to the purpose of the research and consultation this interest is. Measuring change over time brings a number of technical issues to the fore about the continuing validity of the measures used. For example, consistency of approach and question wording will be necessary to be certain that it is real change that is being measured, rather than a change in the measures themselves. This brings the risk that organisations will continue to measure issues that are less of a contemporary concern and may feel stuck with using the same questions long after their usefulness has expired.

Measuring change over time is a particular concern in satisfaction surveys. It is possible that changes in responses to satisfaction ratings over time reflect other changes rather than a change in performance. This could be because:

• the profile of customers has changed;

• the reputation or image of the service has changed; or

• expectations of services in general have changed.

To understand these changes more fully, it will be necessary to interpret these findings in the light of knowledge about the make up of the client base. An influx of younger tenants might change expectations. Knowing how expectations vary between different customer groups and tracking this will help to understand change over time.

Another approach would be to track changes by using retrospective rating questions. This approach has been used in evaluations of regeneration activity and could be adapted for general surveys. Responses to baseline and follow up surveys may show no real differences in satisfaction ratings. However, also asking whether the performance has got better or worse, or stayed the same will show any shifts in perceptions of change.

Previous page Next page