Houston 311: An Analysis of Citizen Satisfaction and Engagement

Abstract

Houston, like any other metropolitan area, has thousands of public issues that affect its economy and citizens each year. In 2001, a program named Houston 311 was developed to aid the city’s customer service. It allows Houston citizens to report non-emergency issues easily via telephone, email, smart phone app, or the 311 website. Most importantly, citizens have the ability to rate the manner in which their complaints were addressed and give feedback on the resolution process to hold the city accountable. In aiding this process, it becomes extremely important to identify what exactly the satisfaction rating data attempt to depict. What factors of the City’s efforts have been successful? What are the drivers of negative feedback? What are the drivers of positive feedback? And how can these factors help improve the efforts set forth in the city? In this paper, answers to these questions are outlined in detail, taking into account survey, geographical, and even census information to give as descriptive results as possible. Over the course of 2017, Houston 311 has received over 350,000 service requests, corresponding to more than 300 different types of services. Over the years, the service has received a greater number of responses among the citizens of Houston, increasing the value of the analysis of the survey data.

Description
This paper was originally prepared for Course STAT 435, Fall 2018: Data Science Projects, given by Professor Genevera Allen, Department of Statistics. Co-authors of the original paper include: Benjamin Herndon-Miller, Soo Bin Park, Ben Rieden, and Emily Rychener. Akin Bruce is the winner of the Friends of Fondren Library Research Award.
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Statistics
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Bruce, Akin. "Houston 311: An Analysis of Citizen Satisfaction and Engagement." (2019) Rice University: https://hdl.handle.net/1911/107617.

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