National Tenant Satisfaction Survey (NTSS)

National Tenant Satisfaction Survey (NTSS)
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Detailed information for 2001-2002

Status:

Inactive

Frequency:

Annual

Record number:

5000

The survey collected information about employee workspace, building services, service availability, changes in services and satisfaction with the property management team. The resulting data and analysis will highlight areas which need improvement as well as areas where employees are satisfied with the standard of services delivered.

Data release - February 17, 2003

Description

The National Tenant Satisfaction Survey (NTSS) was undertaken to provide information on the satisfaction of federal public servants who work in buildings under the responsibility of Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) with regard to their physical working environment.

The main objectives of this survey were to:
- Determine tenant satisfaction in government buildings under the responsibility of PWGSC.
- Enable PWGSC to better understand and improve the needs of occupants in its buildings.

Reference period: December

Collection period: December to March

Subjects

  • Business, consumer and property services
  • Rental and leasing and real estate

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The National Tenant Satisfaction Survey is a sample survey of federal government employees in buildings under the responsibility of Public Works and Government Services Canada. Specifically excluded from the survey's coverage are employees in buildings which were expected to have fewer than 10 federal government employees. Also excluded were employees in federal government departments and agencies which chose not to participate in the survey (a list of the excluded departments and agencies for each reference period is available through the link "Summary of changes over time" included in the side bar menu above). Also excluded were buildings which PWGSC specifically chose to exclude for operational or other reasons and buildings for which it was not possible to obtain a list of employee telephone numbers.

Instrument design

Qualitative testing in the form of focus groups was used to test and evaluate the questionnaire and survey concepts.

During March and April of 2001, seven focus group sessions took place in the National Capital Region, in both official languages, each lasting two hours. Before they took part in the focus groups, tenant participants were contacted by telephone to complete the survey. This was done in order to get their reactions from a respondent's point of view.

The main objectives of the focus groups were:

1) To test the overall reaction of knowledgeable clients, Client Service Unit Directors, landlords and building tenants.

2) To test the appropriateness and applicability of concepts, content and flow.

3) To test the response burden and respondent-friendliness

4) To test the cognitive processes of building tenants in responding to the questionnaire including:
- an assessment of the respondents' understanding of various concepts and content; and
- an evaluation of the respondents' ability to respond to questions.

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.

The NTSS is based on a stratified design with simple random sampling within strata. Telephone numbers were used as the sampling unit.

A list of buildings in-scope for the survey was obtained from PWGSC. A frame of telephone numbers was then constructed with the help of regional PWGSC representatives acting as contacts with the telephone companies. Files of telephone numbers for the buildings on the PWGSC building list were obtained from the telephone companies. The files included a field indicating the department or agency to which the telephone numbers belonged. Any buildings which contained only telephone numbers belonging to the departments or agencies which chose not to participate in the survey were removed from the frame.

The telephone companies did not have all the information for some types of telephone systems. In these cases telephone number lists were received directly from PWGSC.

In cases where several buildings were part of a complex (eg. East Tower, West Tower, etc.), it was not always possible to determine to which building a telephone number belonged. The only information available was that it belonged to the complex as a whole. In these cases some, or all, of the buildings within the complex had to be combined on the frame and treated as one building.

The final frame contained telephone numbers for 606 buildings; 236 large buildings and 370 small buildings. There were a total of 145,778 telephone numbers on the frame, 133,365 belonged to large buildings and 12,413 belonged to small buildings. All survey results relate to the 606 buildings on the final frame.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2001-12-11 to 2002-03-15

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents.

Interviews were conducted over the telephone from four of the Statistics Canada regional offices i.e., Halifax, Sturgeon Falls, Winnipeg, and Vancouver.

Interviewers contacted each of the sampled telephone numbers to conduct the interview. Data was collected using a computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) system. Responses to survey questions are captured directly by the interviewer at the time of the interview using a computerized questionnaire. Interviews lasted 12 minutes on average.

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .

Error detection

A series of edits were performed on the capture file to check the data paths and flows and for internal consistency. The first type of error treated was errors in questionnaire flow, where questions which did not apply to the respondent (and should therefore not have been answered) were found to contain answers. In this case a computer edit automatically eliminated superfluous data by following the flow of the questionnaire implied by answers to previous, and in some cases, subsequent questions.

The second type of error treated involved a lack of information in questions which should have been answered. For this type of error, a non-response or "not-stated" code was assigned to the item.

Imputation

This methodology does not apply.

Estimation

The final weights are based on the inverse of the initial probability that the telephone number was selected in the sample in addition to some adjustments. The following adjustments were made to derive the final weight.

- An adjustment to account for non-response to the survey, out-of-scope telephone numbers on the frame and the fact that some employees have more than one telephone number is calculated.
- An adjustment to account for the fact that one telephone number could be linked to several employees. Question SI_Q04 asked the respondent how many people were using the selected telephone number. The second adjustment uses the response to SI_Q04 to adjust the final weight to account for this one telephone number to many employees relationship.

Please refer to Chapter 11.0 (Weighting) of the User Guide for detailed information.

Quality evaluation

Considerable time and effort was made to reduce non-sampling errors in the survey. Quality assurance measures were implemented at each step of the data collection and processing cycle to monitor the quality of the data. These measures include the use of highly skilled interviewers, extensive training of interviewers with respect to the survey procedures and questionnaire, focus group testing of the questionnaire, procedures to ensure that data capture errors were minimized, and coding and edit quality checks to verify the processing logic.

Interviewer training consisted of reading the NTSS Interviewer's Guide, attending a one day formal in-class training session and discussing any questions with senior interviewers before the start of the survey. A description of the background and objectives of the survey was provided, as well as a glossary of terms and a set of questions and answers. In addition, the computer-assisted telephone interviewing system used for the collection reduced the possibility of error.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any data which would divulge information obtained under the Statistics Act that relates to any identifiable person, business or organization without the prior knowledge or the consent in writing of that person, business or organization. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

Any estimates generated from this survey for client use will be screened in order to protect the anonymity of individual survey respondents. Answer categories are suppressed or collapsed into larger categories in order to ensure confidentiality. Estimates generated will be released to the user, subject to meeting the guidelines for analysis and release outlined in Chapter 9.0 (Guidelines for Tabulation, Analysis and Release) of the User Guide.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology does not apply to this survey.

Data accuracy

The response rate for the National Tenant Satisfaction Survey, 2002 was 90%.

Please refer to Chapter 8.0 (Data Quality) of the User Guide for detailed information.

Documentation

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