Conducting
a Survey
in Your Community
Why
Conduct a Community Survey?
When
community groups want to take action, influence policy, change things
around, or shake things up, a community survey is an effective way
to find out what people are thinking and how they feel. The Laboratory
for Community and Economic Development has developed an online,
Internet-based survey tool to help your community:
- Gather
information about people’s attitudes and opinions.
- Find
out how residents rank issues, problems and opportunities in order
of importance and urgency.
- Give
local people a voice in determining policy, goals and priorities.
- Determine
resident’s support for initiatives.
- Evaluate
current programs and policies.
- End
speculation about "what people are thinking" or "what people really
want."
Community
surveys can help leaders build a foundation for community and economic
development. This web-based tool describes a nine-step process for
conducting a survey in your community. This survey tool can be helpful
as you set priorities for your survey, determine sample size, evaluate
surveying techniques, and identify questions.
Nine Steps
for a Community Survey
Accessing
the Online Community Survey Tool
To
begin learning about conducting a survey, login to www.ag.uiuc.edu/~lced/newsurvey2.
As you enter information, you will be able to access it later by
remembering your User ID. When you login for the first time, choose
a one word User ID such as the first part of your email address
— it should be easy to remember.
If
you have installed the RealAudio Plug-in, choose the narrated tour
to listen to a brief overview of how the survey tool works. RealPlayer
is an audio and video playback tool for the Internet. The majority
of audio and video on the web is played back with this plug-in software.
This software is free and easy to install. Instructions for downloading
the RealPlayer software are available on the login page. Login and
follow the nine steps to learn more about conducting a survey. Each
of the boxes in the diagram are interactive and provide valuable
information about conducting a community-driven survey.
- The
first step for all community initiatives is to create a survey
committee that represents a broad spectrum of local interests.
- The
committee will identify important community issues that should
be addressed by the survey and the stakeholders (people affected
by the issues addressed in the needs and resource survey).
- Stakeholders
should be included in planning the survey instrument and disseminating
the results.
- The
questions to include in your survey can be selected from the bank
of questions provided on the Internet site.
- The
committee will determine who to sample and how many people to
sample. They will identify the list or sampling frame from which
to select the sample, and determine which survey distribution
technique to use.
- The
committee will be responsible for distributing the survey to the
local population.
- The
Laboratory for Community and Economic Development will assist
with the data analysis phase of the survey.
- The
online survey tool provides an interactive framework to help summarize
the findings of the survey and to draft a preliminary Executive
Summary.
- With
information from the community survey, the working committee can
create a report with recommendations for action.
For
More Information:
Julie
Fesenmaier
Laboratory for Community and Economic Development
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
905 S. Goodwin
Urbana, IL 61801
Tel:
(217)355-6166
Email:
Julie Fesenmaier [fesenmai@uiuc.edu]
|
Community
& Economic Development