Conducting Concerns Surveys

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Conducting Concerns Surveys
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What is a concerns survey?

• A survey in which citizens identify the most
  important issues facing their community.

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Results can then be used to

• help form strategies to deal with community
  problems
• maintain things that work
• rally the community around a cause
• build consensus

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Why conduct a concerns survey?

• You should start off with people's concerns
• It involves community members in the
  decision-making process early on
• It's a useful source of information for
  initiatives, funders, and participants
• It's easy to do
• It helps set the work agenda
• It builds consensus

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Who should you survey?

• As many local people as possible!

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How to prepare a concerns survey

• Consider budget resources
• Put together a working group to design the survey
• Invite selected decision makers to submit
  additional survey items
• Prepare a 30-item survey with additional
  demographic info

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How to prepare a concerns survey (cont.)

• For every selected issue ask
• how important the issue is to citizens?
• how satisfied citizens are with community efforts
  on the issue?

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Distributing a concerns survey

• Direct mail is most common.
• Other methods
• Drop boxes
• Media distribution
• Convenience sampling
• Group administration
• Door-to-door canvassing

You may also want to consider using multiple
methods of distribution
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Collecting the surveys

• Gather incoming surveys collected at
  participating sites
• Review returned surveys
• Secure a larger return, if necessary

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Analyzing and Compiling the Results

• Average the importance satisfaction for each
  item
• Rank items according to the ones that have the
  highest percentages of importance
• Strengths high ratings in both importance and
  satisfaction
• Problems rated high in importance but low
  satisfaction

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Analyzing and Compiling the Results

• Write up a brief report summarizing strengths,
  problems, and overall approval rating
• Identify five to ten strengths and five to ten
  problems
• Share the above information with your staff.

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What next?

• Conduct a public meeting
• Review main strengths problems
• Lead separate discussions on each issue
• Afterwards, write a one-page narrative for each
  issue discussed

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Prepare a concerns report

• Should consist of
• Executive memo
• Brief report
• Data table
• Discussion report
• Demographic data other displays
• Suggestions on how to use the report in the
  planning process