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Title:

How Do Citizens Evaluate Public Officers' Communication?

Accession Number:

01154975

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

Public involvement (PI), which has recently been introduced into various infrastructure planning processes, and opportunities for communication between citizen and public officers have become increasingly widespread. However, public officers often lack training in communication and may not convey ideas clearly to citizens. In this study, the authors analyze the responses of public officers to questions typically asked by citizen at public meetings. The factors that citizens use to evaluate the performance of public officers were found to be "proactive/defensive stance", "expression" and "technical terms". These factors were based on a review of the literature and interviews with PI practitioners. In the authors' previous study, "good manner" was the most influential factor; thus, "good manner" was assumed as prerequisite for effective communication in this study. Video recordings of mock question and answer scenes were made by combining aspects of these three factors in four profiles of public officer responses that ranged from good to poor. Study participants evaluated each of the video recordings of public officer responses. The video recordings of responses with an absence of "technical terms" received the highest evaluation. On the whole, the presence or absence of the "technical terms" was judged to be the second most influential factor for citizens behind "good manner". This is followed by "proactive/defensive stance" and then "expression". Thus, public officers should convey information to citizens without using "technical terms" as described herein so as to discuss issues clearly. The findings of this study will promote better communication with citizens engaged in PI.

Monograph Accession #:

01147878

Report/Paper Numbers:

10-1995

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Hyuga, Nami
Terabe, Shintaro

Publication Date:

2010

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2010-1-10 to 2010-1-14
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

DVD

Features:

Figures; References (21) ; Tables (5)

Subject Areas:

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010 Paper #10-1995

Files:

TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Jan 25 2010 10:55AM