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The reauthorized Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) of 1996 added provisions requiring allcommunity water systems (CWS) to deliver annual water quality reports called ConsumerConfidence Reports (CCRs) to their customers. With an estimated 46,000 CWS required todevelop and distribute CCRs to their customers each year, the CCR requirement poses animportant challenge for water utilities to disseminate information to their customers. Theresearch reported here was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of CCRs and to betterunderstand the effect of CCRs on water utility customers, specifically to evaluate whetherand how CCRs influence consumer perceptions, and what attributes of CCRs most influenceconsumers' perceptions.Developing effective communications is a deliberate process that can build on past experienceand the experience of other water utilities and researchers. Toward that end, the authors soughtinput from a wide range of relevant sources that included previous research, water utilitymanagers and staff, and the actual customers for whom the communications are intended. Theauthors' goals included:reviewing what is currently known about public perceptions of drinking water safety,the effect of water utility communications on those perceptions, and the researchmethods used to make those assessments;determining what water utilities are currently doing to meet the CCR requirements,and what information the CWS would find most helpful;reviewing and analyzing the content and attributes of the CCRs that water utilities arecurrently sending to their customers;linking those attributes with customer reactions in an experimental setting todetermine what makes a CCR more "usable" for a customer and more "effective" fora water utility;assessing the current reach of CCRs and other water utility communications, and theimpact these communications are having on customer awareness, perceptions, andattitudes about drinking water safety and their local water utility; and,integrating all of this information into a set of observations, conclusions, andrecommendations that local water utilities can apply to evaluate and improve theirown communications, including both the mandatory CCR and other voluntarymethods.To achieve these goals, the authors used several different techniques to conduct primary researchwith the aim of better understanding CCR effectiveness. The research comprised five integratedtasks:Task 1 - a mail survey of 118 water utilities exploring what CWS are doing to meetthe CCR requirements;Task 2 - ten directed micro-focus groups with water utility customers in five cities toexplore customer reactions to reading CCRs;Task 3 - CCR attribute characterization, where 127 CCRs were coded on 95 attributesto explore what attributes are most important in determining the usability ofCCRs;Task 4 - a national random sample of the general population, conducted via atelephone survey with 1,146 water utility customers and 268 well water users,to investigate the current reach and impact of CCRs; and,Task 5 - a central site survey with 152 water utility customers in three cities, whichevaluated CCRs on multiple response scales to determine how customers reactto CCR attributes. Includes 11 references, tables.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 04/07/2004 Number of Pages: 20File Size: 1 file , 330 KB