Why do public sector agencies pay for customized surveys when it’s not always necessary?

Most Canadian police services conduct public opinion surveys periodically—some annually, some less often—to measure how their services are perceived by their citizens. Even though the police services are asking many of the same questions, they each contract their own survey which is very expensive. They also field the surveys at different times using different methods so the results cannot be compared.

When Advanis noticed that Public Safety Canada and Halifax Regional Police Service had generated a common set of questions for police services to use, we decided to create a program to which all police services could subscribe, priced at less than one-third of what a police service would typically pay for this type of research. The program also allows services to compare their results with those of other jurisdictions because of the common questions, methodology, and timeframe. Police services can also run their own analysis since we provide access to an online reporting environment.

Advanis fielded this survey in 2020 and 2021 using a randomly-sampled data collection method, collecting about 18,000 total surveys each year, including very large base sizes for many police services.

Our national and regional results are freely available to police services and the public, which of course includes our valued clients, partners, and associates, at advanis.net/self-sponsored-studies. These reports show that Canadians' views of their police services have worsened in the past year.

Several police services across Canada have subscribed to the program and we look forward to working with others in the coming year. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Gary Offenberger.

We are also interested in helping other public sector services, agencies, and departments benchmark and achieve economies of scale to lower their costs.

If you’re interested in discussing this possibility for your area of interest, please don’t hesitate to contact Gary.