Methodology of Empirical Research
The chosen research field is neighbourhoods of Lithuania because these institutions of local government have a direct and closest contact with public service clients. It is emphasised in literature that co-production of public services takes place in that sphere where the client and the service provider interact in person and namely local institutions are the most suitable stakeholders (Boyle ey al., 2006). Admitting the benefit of client active participation and accepting that building client participation on their initiative is not a sufficient premise to create effective services, research into client motivation to participate in the neighbourhoods of Lithuania in practice is taken as the starting point for developing effective service providing systems.
The constructivist position and the provision that the influence of motivation methods on clients‘ activeness in participation must be researched on the basis of managing experience in the public services sector in practice was followed. Therefore not hypothetical ways of motivating but those used in practice in the neighbourhoods of Lithuania were identified. Personal purposeful interviews with neighbourhood employees were conducted to identify the employed ways of motivating. The methodological provisions that participation is more or less managed only in active participation in neighbourhoods because ways of motivating can be identified on the basis of their experience were followed. The sample of this qualitative research was drawn on the “snowball“ principle and those neighbourhoods, where the population actively participates, were selected. It was found out in the course of the research that the neighbourhoods in the sample do not properly represent the general population so a mixed focus selection method based on the criterion factor was used: items of the sample were drawn from the population on the basis of the criteria established by the researchers: activeness of the population in the neighbourhood, type of