摘要
公共服务满意度是绩效评估的重要工具。然而,研究发现其并不是一个绝对和稳定的数值,容易受到测量方法包括问题措辞和位置等的影响,即心理学上的启动效应或情景效应。研究将调查实验嵌入一项高速公路服务满意度横向项目,通过将高速公路服务"总体满意度"与"特定满意度"问题的先后顺序进行随机分配,发现将"总体满意度"放在"特定满意度"之前的组(n=619),比将其放在"特定满意度"之后的组(n=601),有更高的总体满意度均值,证实了问题顺序效应在中国情境下的存在。基于回归分析发现,总体满意度的关键因素的识别,对问题顺序也有高度敏感性。研究发现具有重要的政策意义:任何使用公共服务满意度作为依据的管理决策,必须考虑到这些效应,以便保证决策的合理性。
In recent years,public-service satisfaction has been an important tool to evaluate performance.It has been widely used by academic and government organizations for accountability,resource allocations,and public-program reforms.However,publicservice satisfaction is not reflected in absolute and stable values.Instead,it may be relative and sensitive to the wording of questions and their order in survey questionnaires.Firstly,the level of satisfaction not only reflects the quality of service,it may also be connected to broader attitudes toward the government,such as trust and expectations.A higher quality of service does not necessarily lead to a higher level of satisfaction.In fact,the opposite may be the case.Secondly,in some satisfaction surveys,people who have not experienced a real service(i.e.,non-users)will also evaluate the service because of the sample selection problem.These evaluations are not based on real personal experiences,but rather they are based on general impressions or even casual evaluations.In addition,satisfaction surveys as a subjective evaluation of public servicesmay be affected by various incidental factors other than the quality of services,such as media reports,rumours,public events,and so forth,so the continuity and robustness of the evaluation may be problematic.They also may be susceptible to various other factors,especially measurement methods,including the wording and the location,that is,the psychological priming effects or the contextual effects.In order to explore whether this measurementissue exists within a Chinese institutional and cultural context,our study embeds the survey question into a highway-service satisfaction project in S province.By randomly assigning the order of"overall satisfaction"and"specific satisfaction"with highway services in a questionnaire,the group(n=619)for whom questions on"overall satisfaction"are put before questions on"a specific satisfaction"had a higher value of overall satisfaction than the group(n=601)that was first asked about"a specific satisfaction"before being asked about"overall satisfaction,"thus confirming the existence of"question order effects"in the Chinese context.Identification of the key drivers behind overall satisfaction also turn out to be highly sensitive to the question order in a regression model.Even minor changes in a publicservice satisfaction survey may alter the theoretical model behind the data.In our study,this means that changing the question order may lead to the identification of a different set of key drivers behind satisfaction.These results demonstrate that question order is not a minor consideration in surveys and can lead to quite different policy priorities.Webelieve that these research findings have important policy implications,indicating that any practical management decisions based on satisfaction with public services must consider these effects in order to ensure the accuracy and soundness of decision-making.
作者
王思琦
郭金云
WANG Siqi;GUO Jinyun(School of Public Affairs,Southwest Jiaotong University;School of Public Administration,Sichuan University)
出处
《公共管理评论》
2020年第1期92-115,共24页
China Public Administration Review
基金
教育部人文社会科学研究青年基金项目“基于IAT实验方法的政府信任测量与影响机制研究”(项目批准号:17XJC630009)资助
关键词
公共服务满意度
问题顺序效应
启动效应
调查实验
public service satisfaction
question order effect
priming effect
survey experiments
作者简介
王思琦,西南交通大学公共管理与政法学院副教授,研究方向为实地实验方法与公共服务满意度,norsky@163.com;郭金云,四川大学公共管理学院副教授,研究方向为公共服务绩效评估与社区治理,guojinyuan@scu.edu.cn。
