LEARNING FROM CUSTOMERS AND COMMUNITY
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can last from a few months to a year. For example, when the Minnesota
Department of Transportation established an online community to pro-
vide ongoing customer feedback and interaction, it used social media to
help recruit a panel of 600 residents (Wallace 2012). Similarly, Houston
Metro used social media to announce that it was taking applications for
a citizen’s advisory committee (Sit 2012). A post on the Metro blog asked
riders and non-riders alike to consider applying.
When assembling panels, researchers implement controls to ensure
that the groups are representative of the target population. Once the pan-
els are established, agencies frequently poll the respond ...