In determining whether or not user-friendly budgets are having an impact on citizen participation in local governments it is necessary to conduct a survey. This survey will consist of several different questions. The questions will examine the overall effectiveness of the user-friendly budget document. The main object of the survey is to see if user-friendly budgets are influencing citizen participation in local government. In order to better understand the influence of user-friendly budgets and how it relates to citizen participation it is best to conduct a survey of those participating in local government meetings. Thus, this paper is going to explain (i) the surveys purpose; (ii) the survey participants; (iii) the method of delivery; (iv) …show more content…
The first issue is that of privacy of the information collected. By collecting survey responses at local municipal budget hearings, no storage of personal data is necessary as it is irrelevant to the survey responses. The only information collected is whether or not an individual lives in the local municipality. If an individual does not live in the local municipality being surveyed, then they will not receive a survey. Therefore, the collection of personal data will not occur. The second concern that may arise when handing out surveys is the issue of those that participate in local budget hearing that have a language barrier. To help get around the language barrier, surveys will be available in English and Spanish, to widen the availability of survey …show more content…
The survey consists of six, yes or no questions. The first question is a broad based knowledge question for determing whether an individual had previous knowledge of user-friendly budgets. If the answer is no, the individual cannot effectively answer the remaining questions. The same goes for question two which is asking if the individual has read his or her local municipality user-friendly budget document. If an individual has not read his or her local municipality user-friendly budget document then the rest of survey cannot be answered. The next questions is extremely important in that it is asking if the user-friendly budget influenced in any way an individuals decision to attend their local municipal budget hearing. This question determines has the user-friendly budget document generated citizen participation. The fourth questions asks individuals if they understood the revenues and expenditures in the current fiscal year to see if the user-friendly budget document is actually easy to understand. If the answers are favored towards the no category, this will create tremendous problems. If individual overwhelming do not understand user-friendly budgets then they may be deemed useless. The last two questions are little more complicated than the rest. They are not simple just a yes or no answer but request if an individual answers no, to please explain