Study Objectives

The City of Atlanta sought to:

• Understand the public service experiences of its constituents.
• Innovate the public service experiences of its constituents through co-production.

Mixed Methods Design

• One-on-one interviews with key service agents/providers to understand goals and needs and identify any additional goals. 30-60mins

• Ethnography and direct observations to study behaviors and types of activities, learn user/participant vocabulary, understand government agents’ interactions with residents, and solidify and clarify research questions. 4 months

• Focus group interview, which included closed card sorting, with key community leaders to further clarify research questions and to inform the content of the survey questionnaire. 2 hours
• Survey questionnaires (via in-person double-sided one-pager and an online survey platform) to quantify prevalence, describe participants, and ascertain predictors. 10-15 minutes to complete, open for 3 weeks

• Diary study with select survey participants to keep log of their thoughts, experiences, and activities during a critical 3-week period of City deliberations over two controversial decisions.

• Quantitative data analysis: Cleaned, coded, analyzed, and interpreted survey data via Excel, Stata, SPSS, running descriptive and inferential statistics (cross-tabs, correlations, sample statistics, linear and logistic regressions).
• Qualitative data analysis: Conducted thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews, ethnographic fieldnotes, and diary study entries, manually and with NVivo. 4 weeks