Report and Test Examine Effectiveness of Mail Surveys

In the November/ December issue of FieldWorks… A look at Asian and Asian Pacific Islander communities in the United States. For more information, contact HUD USER at (800) 245–2691.

Two reports recently released by the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) examine the effectiveness of using mail surveys to gauge residents' concerns about their housing.

In Consolidation Report: HQS Section 8 Mail Survey Study, research findings into the effectiveness of Section 8 resident mail surveys to evaluate Public Housing Authority (PHA) compliance with Housing Quality Standards (HQS) are presented. The report discusses the research process and the result of major research questions posed before the project began. The project examines the extent to which a mail questionnaire provides responses from all types of Section 8 residents, and the extent to which the assessments of residents agreed with the assessments of trained inspectors.

The research represents the first data collection instrument designed for this purpose for residents and the first test of the distribution of this instrument. The research team posed three major assessment questions:

• Will the mail questionnaires provide responses from all types of Section 8 residents?

• Will the resident HQS assessment agree with the onsite trained HQS inspector assessment of their homes?

• Will the diversity of gender, age, and housing type affect the rate of return and agreement with the onsite HQS inspections?

Within a HUD Field Office, the questionnaire may provide a means to compare individual PHAs. If a field office surveys a set of communities, for example, there would be a basis for selecting PHAs for further examination and assistance. The report also makes recommendations to accommodate the survey administration within local housing authorities and HUD field offices.

The second report presents the results of a pilot test conducted in 1998 by PD&R. Using a questionnaire similar to that of the Section 8 study, the test examined a mail survey to obtain assessments of housing quality and customer satisfaction from residents of public housing and those receiving assistance from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The report, Resident Assessment of Housing Quality: Lessons from Pilot Survey, describes the results of this test.

The objectives of this study were to compare methods of distribution, examine overall return rates, and compare resident data with observations from onsite inspectors. This survey was administered to a sample of approximately 4,000 households located in 8 counties in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri. Key findings were:

• The survey yielded high response rates (more than 60 percent) regardless of distribution, and approximately 70 percent for FHA-assisted households when surveys were addressed to the resident and the distribution was by mail. This reinforced findings from the Section 8 study in which rates of return were more than 75 percent. Although several alternatives are available to HUD in conducting a survey, direct mail using the resident's name consistently produces higher rates of return.

• Residents' overall ratings of their units were highly consistent with assessments made by onsite inspectors. Rates of agreement for individual items were frequently above 90 percent, and for more than three-fourths of the items, rates of agreement were greater than 80 percent.

• For a sample of units where respondents answered the questionnaire twice, the rates of agreement between the two questionnaires were high—generally more than 80 percent agreement.

• The importance of followup distributions in obtaining a high rate of return was confirmed.

• The mail survey was successful in the worst and best of housing developments.

• Results reinforce the Section 8 study that found no difference in return rates for a 3-page and a 5-page questionnaire and found no difference in return rates for packages distributed by mail with HUD markings and those with university markings.