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What Do We Compare Your Community Against?
We believe that in order to be helpful, a comparison must be ‘apples to apples’. In short, you need to compare your community against other similar communities. Therefore, the cornerstone of our reports is the creation of your community's customized Benchmark Peer Group, the 20 most similar communities in Massachusetts derived using 15 key socio-economic, demographic and geographic attributes.
Why Do We Compare To The Median Of The Benchmark Peer Group?
Throughout our reports, we a couple of notable exceptions, we compare the target community against the median of its Benchmark Peer Group. The median is the statistical measure of the middle of a group.
We use the median of its Benchmark Peer Group for several reasons. First, the median, unlike the mean (or average), is not distorted by outlier (unusually high or low) results. Second, if a municipality is attempting to ‘benchmark’, or compare itself against the practices of its peers, the median reflects a standard which should be neither impossible to attain nor too low. Finally, by using the median, our results are insulated any potential data error.
How Do We Frame The Data That We Use?
We believe that one of the more useful ways to look at municipal metrics, such as revenues or expenditures, is on the basis of the group affected by the measured metric. For the most part, this means that we analyze items on a per capita because municipal services are provided to all the members of the community. By comparing per capita figures we eliminate the skew that the relative population sizes of the compared communities may create. Therefore, per capita comparisons allows us to analyze cities and towns of varying sizes on a more ‘level playing field’. Despite our preference for per capita data, we also provide analyses based on other metrics that we think might offer other, useful ways to examine the issue.
What Data Do We Use?
The analysis in the Municipal Yardstick utilize a wide variety of data from our Benchmark Database. The Benchmark Database includes data from myriad publicly available sources, surveys and our analysis of collective bargaining agreements.
If you would like to learn more about our methodology, please contact us.
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