Testing the evidence, how good are public sector responsiveness measures and how to
improve them?
This paper analyses two common uses of the responsiveness concept in the public management
and political science literature: external political efficacy and satisfaction with
health and education services. The decline of people sense of influence in public
affairs and perceptions about the quality of public services are two key concerns
affecting policymaking. The fact that responsiveness measures are increasingly being
collected in non-official and official household surveys and the range of covariates
available make it possible to test their statistical accuracy. Accuracy encompasses
both reliability (i.e. if the measure produces consistent information over time) and
validity (i.e. if the measure reflects the underlying concept being measured). This
paper finds good evidence on the accuracy of political efficacy measures. Although
no sufficiently strong evidence on the accuracy of satisfaction with health metrics
is stronger than for education services signaling the relevance of other aspects such
as direct exposure to the service and its intensity, as well as the different attributes
shaping satisfaction levels. Findings from this paper support some of the conclusions
in the Responsiveness chapter of the UN Citi Praia Handbook on Governance Statistics.
Published on May 12, 2020
In series:OECD Working Papers on Public Governanceview more titles