The Konstanz' Citizen Survey is a long-term municipal study that has been conducted annually since 2008. The data obtained is based on a representative sample of the citizens of Constance, it is used to describe social change in the city and to examine in more detail key issues of interest to the city of Constance and its citizens. The study is designed by the University of Constance (working group of Prof. Dr. Hinz), and the respective program of questions is closely coordinated with the City of Constance (Main Office, Statistics and Steering Support).
The questionnaire deals with current topics of local politics, with the situation of special groups such as families or students, and with aspects of general scientific interest. Each year there is a focus topic. So far these have been: Housing, civic engagement, culture and education, the coexistence of generations, the anniversary of the Council of Constance, citizens and the municipality in dialog, and last year digitization, mobility and lidos. The life satisfaction of citizens and sociodemographic characteristics are surveyed on a regular basis. The latter is used to describe changes in the population composition over time.
In the meantime (since 2015), the Konstanz' Citizen Survey has been designed as a pure online survey, which can also be accessed via mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones. It is estimated that four out of five households in Constance have access to the Internet. This results in a bias of the respondents towards the Internet-savvy population, which can, however, be taken into account by weighting the results according to characteristics such as age, urban region, gender and nationality.