The Project

PIQUE citizens’ survey

The fieldwork of the PIQUE citizens’survey started on December 2, 2007. The representative citizens’survey constitutes an important element of the PIQUE research (for details, see here). It is to assess the impact of liberalisation and privatisation on the quality of public services. Conducting the interviews has been subcontracted to Synovate.

What is the content of the survey?

The PIQUE citizens’ survey is not a simple satisfaction survey but aims to:
a) assess how users evaluate the quality and price of the public services (do they think they get ‘value for money’)
b) assess the weight of different service components in this evaluation
c) detect and analyse attitudes towards liberalisation and privatisation

Who is questioned?

It is a citizens’ survey. The sample population includes all private persons aged between 18 and 79 living in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Sweden and the UK. In each country 1,000 respondents will be interviewed. The telephone numbers of these people is selected randomly by a computer.

How the survey will be analysed?

All answers provided by a person will be kept confidential, and no names or other identifying information will be associated with their answers. The survey analysis will be done by the team of the Higher Institute of Labour Studies (www.hiva.be), which is a part of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

What will be done with the results?

Lessons will be drawn, which will be disseminated to a range of European and national policy makers and stakeholder groups (government officials, politicians, employers, trade unions). The general public will be informed about the project results by this website (www.pique.at). The results of the survey will be available from September 2008.