A Few Words About On-Line Surveys and Community Outreach

We have lots of experience facilitating large and small community forums, employee groups, union panels, etc. Additionally, we have extensive experience writing and analyzing on-line surveys. I believe that if you can say it to an audience, you can write it in a survey.

Recently a recruiter was asked about on-line surveys as part of a community outreach effort to identify the qualities of a new City Manager.  

“(The consultant) described their experience with the use of on-line surveys and noted that they sometimes illicit few responses, many of which address issues, not the city manager profile. They stated that it is valuable for people to be heard and there are many different ways to accomplish this. They suggested that targeting stakeholders is the best option.”

We respectfully disagree – in fact the best community outreach strategy is to use both facilitated community forums and an on-line survey. On-line surveys are an invaluable tool (if written correctly): 

§        They expand the reach of the outreach effort and allow more community participation.

§        They can be written to allow people who may speak another language like Spanish, Vietnamese or Hmong to be included.

§        When designed correctly, you will get more responses than would be in a traditional community meeting.  For example, we had over 550 responses to a survey we conducted on behalf of the City of San Jose, 125 for the City of Stockton and 449 for the City of Long Beach in support of their Chief of Police Recruitment.

The other big advantages of surveys – they are available 24 hours a day, are convenient to people’s schedules, and allow people to take them anonymously.  Community forums can be inconvenient for the very people they are hoping to attract.  Scheduled too early in the day, people can’t get there because they are working. Too late in the evening and families with children are working on homework or preparing for the next day. Weekends are an alternative, but may be in competition with sports, family events, etc., you get the picture.

The quality of the data is a direct result of the quality of the design.  Graduate level courses in Public Administration teach survey design and statistics as part of the curriculum. All the consultants at Alliance Resource Consulting have graduate degrees in Public Administration from the University of Southern California and we have designed surveys that target information from residents, business residents, employees and non-residents.