city services
How do Portlanders feel about the importance of services provided by the City? How do they rate the quality of services that are provided?
Note on this data: Sample of 1,114 Portlanders. May 15-June 15, 2024.
Download data: Download OVBC’s full report here.
getting into the data and trends
background
From May 17- June 18th, 2024, the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center (OVBC) designed and administered the OVBC 2024 Portland Your City, Your Choice Survey to discover insights about Portlanders values and beliefs related to charter changes, civic life, and quality of life.
It is OVBC's hope that this research will assist individuals and organizations in Portland with planning, policymaking, and communications and serve as a baseline for future research to monitor changes in Portlander's values and beliefs about their city.
about the data
Period of Time: May/June 2024
Sources: The online survey consisted of 1,14 Portland residents ages 18+ and took approximately 15 minutes to complete. Respondents were contacted by using professionally maintained online panels, community partner outreach, and public engagement through local media and social media. In gathering responses, a variety of quality control measures were employed, including questionnaire pre-testing, validation, and real- time monitoring of responses. To ensure a representative sample, demographic quotas were set per US Census information, and the data was statistically weighted by area of the city, gender, age, race/ethnicity, political party, and education.
Types of Data: Survey Data
Geography: City of Portland, OR
Statement of Limitations: Based on a 95% confidence interval, this survey's margin of error for the full sample is +2.30%. Due to rounding or multiple-answer questions, response percentages may not add up to 100%.
good to know
race data in this survey
OVBC surveys currently use aggregated data to analyze the opinions of BIPOC residents in comparison to the opinions of residents who identify as white and not another race. BIPOC residents are not a homogeneous population, instead they represent a wide diversity of races and ethnicities. The findings included in this memo should not be construed such that all people of color are believed to share the same opinions. Disaggregated race data wil be provided when sample sizes permit reliability.
other resources
Participants in the 2022 Portland Insights, Portland City Budget Office Survey identified affordable housing/homeless services as the most important city service to fund within the limited budget, followed by safety services.
what the data shows
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A majority of Portlanders feel only two service areas are essential: emergency fire and paramedic services (63%) and emergency mental health care and supportive services (57%). Shelter for homeless people followed with 50%. A majority of respondents rate all the services as either very important or essential. When asked to rate the quality of these same twelve services as either poor, fair, good, or excellent, less than a majority of Portlanders rate the quality of their most important services good or excellent: emergency fire and paramedic services-42% (1% excellent), emergency mental health care and supportive services-20% (5% excellent), and shelter for homeless people-17% (5%) excellent. The three services with the highest poor ratings were shelter for homeless people (54%), emergency mental health care and supportive services (47%), and subsidized affordable housing (44%).