CITIZEN INTERVIEWS: Listening to Key Leaders in Your Community


Citizen Interviews: Listening To Key Leaders In Your Community
Susan Gulick	Author Info

Abstract

Public policy making often comes down to tradeoffs between different interest groups. Sometimes it's as simple as deciding which group you need to please. However, there is value in listening to all the interest groups in an effort to find common ground and innovative solutions. Structured interviews with key leaders in your community provide two valuable benefits. First, you hear from persons who are most familiar with-and affected by-the issue. Second, by providing a forum for listening to your citizens, you create a process for key community leaders to "buy-in" to the resulting recommendations, making adoption and implementation much less contentious.

Why Citizen Interviews are Important

Government agencies have changed significantly over the past few decades. In the past, government simply provided services and facilities: built roads, issued licenses, regulated utilities, and provided police and fire protection. More recently, public agencies have learned that it is also important to communicate with the public. Nearly every agency now has money budgeted for public education or public information. But when was the last time you heard of a budget directed toward listening to the public? Not informing or educating the public, but instead letting the public educate and inform the government? It is a rare occurrence. Oh, there are plenty of public meetings and public hearings, but the real intent behind most of these is to inform-or sway-the public, not to listen with an open mind to ideas or suggestions. Perhaps it is time for government to go the next step: in addition to public education and public information, government should devote resources to listening to key leaders in their community.

We are a society who relies on "experts." Nearly everyday you'll hear a news report or an advertisement quoting the opinions or preferences of academics or industry leaders. As consumers of the media, we are trained to place great importance on what these "experts" say, and to rely on their assessments in forming our own opinions. Similarly, journalists almost always include a quote from persons who are perceived by the community as leaders on an issue. These experts are recognized as people who speak for a larger community because it is commonly accepted they shape the opinions of those around them.

The same is true in the formulation of public policy. Community leaders on any given issue have a large amount of influence on the persons around them. They may influence how they vote, or may motivate their neighbors to come to a community meeting or protest. These few informed and involved leaders will often make the difference in whether a new public policy is well accepted or controversial. If these people are carefully selected and listened to when you are developing new policies or proposals, there is a much greater chance that the adoption will go smoothly.

The purpose of interviews is very different than the purpose of a statistically valid survey: surveys seek to measure the opinions of an entire community, while interviews are a tool to better understand the insights of a small slice of the community that is active and involved in an issue. One way to explain the difference is that a survey seeks to measure the opinions of the silent majority, while interviews seek the ideas (as opposed to opinions) of a small, active group of persons who are more knowledgeable and informed than the average citizen.

As an example, consider potholes in the streets of Seattle. You will hear the Seattle media quote survey results that indicate that filling potholes is one of the highest priorities of Seattle residents. But what does this tell you? Will this issue really be resolved if all the potholes are filled, or is this just the current example of citizens' frustrations with paying taxes and not feeling they are receiving "their money's worth" in government services. Or is the real issue their frustration with the length of time it takes to travel across the city? If the potholes are filled, but traffic jams remain, will these frustrations really go away? Most surveys will not give you answers to these questions; you have to spend more time exploring the reasoning behind the opinion to understand the response. If you just rely on survey results-and fill all the potholes-you may not find out until it is too late that City resources would have been much better spent on addressing traffic congestion rather than potholes.

Surveys are rarely a medium to gather solutions. Many citizens spend hours pondering the issues facing policy makers, and have ideas of how to solve problems. While some of these ideas may be of little value, there are likely to be some gems hidden in the minds of the citizens. You need to do more than conduct a survey to discover these ideas.

Focus groups are another common tool to hear from citizens. Focus groups are useful when you want some group synergy-for example, doing market research. If you are testing a new ad campaign, it is useful to show examples to a focus group and hear their responses. The individuals will listen to one another and will probably inspire better ideas as a group than they would if interviewed separately. However, if you are asking people about sensitive issues, they are less likely to completely forthright and trust the confidentiality of a focus group.

Personal interviews are an effective tool to listen to active citizens-particularly when the issue at hand is sensitive or controversial. In a personal and confidential setting, the most informed individuals in your community are given the opportunity to share their ideas and suggestions. But the greatest benefit to listening to these community leaders is that it makes these persons feel that they helped create the solution. This makes implementing the solution much less controversial.

Conducting Citizen Interviews

Citizen interviews require a multi-step process:

Clarify the purpose of the interviews and the issues to be addressed;
Identify the appropriate community leaders to interview;
Design the interview and prepare the questionnaire;
Select the interviewer;
Invite the prospective interviewees to participate;
Conduct the interviews; and
Summarize the results.

1. Purpose and Issues

It is important that the purpose of your survey be focused and narrow. You must identify the specific area of interest or concern, and write a clear purpose statement. This statement is shared repeatedly throughout the process, so make sure it's clear and accurate. If you try to cover too many topics, either the interview will be too long, or each topic will be covered in insufficient detail. For example, if you are seeking opinions on how to improve government, you will receive ideas so diverse and disconnected to one another that the process will be of little value. However, if the purpose is to gather ideas for improving you land-use permit application process, you will find it much easier to design a useful interview.

2. Identify persons to be interviewed

Persons selected for interviews should be people who are viewed as leaders by some segment of your community. They may be active citizen watchdogs, union leaders, persons with strong political influence, or those who are recognized as being exceptionally knowledgeable about the issue at hand. The main criterion for selecting persons is that others in the community will listen to this person's opinion on the issue. You must keep in mind that you are seeking to involve these persons in the solution, and your goal is for them to become spokespersons for the solution in the community.

3. Preparation of the Questionnaire

The first decision you must make is whether the interviews should be held in-person or over the telephone. The advantage of face-to-face interviews over phone interviews is that people tend to be more open and trusting in personal interviews. The advantage of phone interviews is that they are generally more cost-effective, as well as more convenient for the persons interviewed. In either case, you must develop a standard questionnaire. A good questionnaire usually will include both narrative questions and questions that allow the interviewees to rank responses on a numeric scale. This type of interview provides two key things: a summary of the issues and concerns people have, and a numeric ranking that allows for quick summation and comparisons of responses. This way you can compare the numeric ratings to see if there are distinct differences between different types of people interviewed. The most useful information from the interview, however, will be the narrative responses to more open-ended questions. Narrative responses are much more informative than numeric rankings.

4. Select the Interviewer

It is preferable to have one person do the interviews if possible. This ensures consistency. The interviewer should have a few basic attributes. First and foremost, all persons interviewed should perceive the interviewer as non-biased. The interviewer should also be trusted to keep all that is heard in strict confidence. It is often easier to meet these criteria if the interviewer is someone from outside the community. Finally, the interviewer must have the skills to distill all that is heard into a useful summary for policy-makers. It will not be useful for policy makers to receive a lengthy list of every statement. These statements need to be summarized into major themes, which is discussed in more detail below.

5. Invite Persons to Participate

The letter of invitation is probably the most important step of the process. The letter must communicate that the persons invited to participate are recognized as leaders in the community, and their participation is needed to solve the problem. The letter should be signed by someone who has the authority to act on the results of the interviews-for example the Mayor or City Council Members. The letter must communicate that this is an important process that will be taken very seriously by government leaders.

6. Conduct the Interviews

It is important that every interview open with an introduction that explains the purpose of the project, and reiterates that the content of the interviews will be kept confidential. The interviewer should clarify that he/she will summarize what is heard, but will never reveal who said what. The interviews should not be scheduled so close together that there is no time to hear other concerns or ideas at the end of the interview. The persons interviewed should leave with the feeling that they were important enough to receive as much time as it took to hear their concerns. Conversely, you don't want to make the next person scheduled for an interview wait. A skilled interviewer who can move the interview along without creating a sense of rushing is very important.

7. Summarize the Results

In summarizing the results of the interviews it is imperative that the interviewer craft recommendations that are both responsive to the concerns of the citizens and useful to policy makers. The entire process will be wasted if all that is done is restating at length every statement that was heard; the interviewer needs to sift through all the details and capture the significant policy choices and their implications. In addition, each person interviewed should be able to recognize his or her concerns and ideas in the written summary. A key purpose of this summary is to underscore the importance of the persons interviewed in creating the recommendations. Finally, the summary should identify areas of common ground among the diverse citizens, as well as areas where there are clear divisions.

A Case Study: Jefferson County, Washington

Jefferson County is small, rural County in scenic northwestern Washington. Residents of the area are passionate about land-use issues: landowners want to develop their land and environmentalists want to preserve the natural areas. The County is facing significant growth, which has made land use the most contentious political issue in the County. In the midst of this, there were allegations that staff and County officials were acting unethically when making land use decisions.

In response to this turmoil, the Board of County Commissioners sought an independent assessment of the County's land use procedures. They were interested in a legal assessment of whether local laws and procedures were in compliance with state law, as well as whether they were clear and complete. In addition, the Board wanted to hear citizen perspectives on which land use procedures and agencies are working well, or not working well at all.

Susan Gulick interviewed over 50 citizens-40 in person and 10 over the phone. A structured questionnaire was prepared to gather citizen assessments of various agencies and procedures. Citizens were also asked for ideas for improvements. Each interview took between 20 and 45 minutes to complete, and nearly all were finished in about a half-hour.

Concurrently with the interviews, a legal assessment was conducted by Ted Hunter-an experienced land use attorney. Ted examined the procedural aspects of the land use code and identified areas where the County had liability exposure.

The results of this independent assessment showed that while there were some legal problems with local ordinances, the greatest problem was the nearly universal perception of the public that land use procedures were not working. The procedures were viewed as unclear, confusing, and inconsistently administered. There were distinct differences in the reasons why persons were unhappy with land use actions: some wanted less restrictive development in the County and some wanted greater environmental protection. But regardless of their philosophical position on development, there was clear consensus on the need to create clear and predictable procedures. The value of the confidential interviews is that it allowed persons to air their dissatisfaction with the system without offending anyone. Once they felt that this was heard and understood, they were willing to go the next step and talk about possible solutions.

Following the interviews, the results were summarized to identify the areas of common ground, which included reforms to the land use procedural system. As a result, the Board of County Commissioners created a Citizen Task Force to work with Susan and Ted to develop new ordinances to address both the legal issues and the citizen concerns. The Task Force is comprised of nine persons who were interviewed during the independent assessment. The presence of the interviewer on the Task Force helps ensure that the goals of the task force are closely adhered to as identified during the interview process. The presence of the attorney on the Task Force helps ensure that the solutions crafted by the citizens are put into proper ordinance form in a manner consistent with legal requirements. The Task Force will send recommended ordinances to the Board of County Commissioners in March. If the process works as expected, the resulting ordinances will address citizens' concerns regarding land use decision-making processes in a way that protects the County from legal liability.

Conclusion

Citizen interviews are another tool for policy makers facing difficult choices. Interviews are not intended to replace surveys or focus groups, but rather to add a more personal method of listening to community leaders when surveys or focus groups are not adequate. Interviewing key citizens is a proactive way to assure the public that they are being heard. It also is an opportunity to gather innovative ideas and solutions. Most importantly, interviews effectively involve citizens in the creation of solutions-which greatly reduces the controversy when elected officials act on the recommendations.

Susan Gulick
Gulick Environmental Consulting
Seattle, Washington
For more information, contact Susan Gulick at (206) 548-0469 or Ted Hunter at (206) 628-0700.