national multiple family submetering and allocation billing program ...

Upon completion of the survey entry work, a summary table was created for each city for
each survey. All responses were totaled and the appropriate descriptive statistics were
calculated. Participating utilities and research team members were updated as needed.
Regulatory surveys were implemented by Potomac Resources, Inc. and the read and bill
company survey was implemented by Aquacraft, Inc. Site visits were conducted by Aquacraft
and NRC in conjunction with the participating water utilities.
Use of PROPID to Preserve Customer Anonymity
A unique random number was assigned to each account number in the sample frame.
This number was called the PROPID. The address labels for the survey mailing lists contained
the PROPID that identified the customer. Each response therefore contained a unique PROPID.
This was loaded with the response record into an ACCESS database table. Each response record
could therefore be linked to the historic water use database that also contained the PROPID. At
the conclusion of the study, the databases prepared for future researchers will only contain the
PROPID, not the actual account number, service address or customer name, thus preserving the
anonymity of the participating customers.
POSTCARD, MANAGER, AND RESIDENT SURVEYS
The research plan called for three distinct and sequential surveys: the postcard survey, the
manager survey, and the resident survey. Although more surveys were implemented in this
study, these three formed the core of the data collection effort. The postcard survey identified
the type of billing method and the number of units at each property. Through properties
identified in the postcard survey, a far more detailed survey instrument was sent to managers of
the individual properties in order to find out more about each property. Respondents to the
manager survey were asked to provide addresses for the individual units at their property. Many
did provide this address information and subsequently surveys were sent to residents at these
multi-family properties seeking information about individual water use habits and opinions and
experiences with the water billing methodology.
Mail surveys were selected to obtain information about multi-family housing because of
the relative ease of implementation and low cost compared to other options such as on-site audits
or telephone surveys. Because the Study had 13 study sites spread across the country, the project
team determined that a mail survey would be the only feasible method for obtaining the required
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