October 2024

How to use community surveys for decision-making

When you look at your community survey results, how do you identify where to prioritize your investments?

What data will you show to the City Council to support your recommendations?

Do you tackle the lowest-scoring topics first?

What if the lowest-scoring topics are not important to your community?

A fantastic solution is to identify the MOST important topics to your residents.

But how do we do that?

The old way is to ask respondents what is most important to them.

But as simple as that is, several problems exist.

As one communications expert once said . . .

“Respondents don’t think how they feel, say what they think, or do what they say.”

Respondents may tell you something is very important when, in reality, it carries less of a weight in their decision-making process.

Given that, how do we discover what is truly important?

There is a solution . . .

This solution has been used for several years in other industries, such as healthcare, utilities, and national and global private-sector corporations.

True North will create a modeled importance score based on the respondents’ answers.

So what does that mean? It’s simple!

The more a program or service score (e.g., police services, recreation opportunities, affordable housing) is correlated with being “very satisfied with the community,” the more critical that program or service is.

Once we identify what is truly important, we will create an “Action Map.” An example of an Action Map is at the end of this article.

We simply plot importance against your community’s performance scores.

This diagram provides a clear direction for where to focus your resources.

In this example, the community’s greatest strengths are Parks & Recreation, Public Safety, and Affordable Housing. However, Road Improvements and Public Transportation are important weaknesses. Addressing these should have a higher priority when planning.

The results are very straightforward. The City Commission should not have to read through pages of data tables to understand what is going on in their communities.

I hope that helps.

If you want more information on why True North is a better solution for your community, click here.

Or click here to set up a call to talk. 

A better way to benchmark within your community surveys

Benchmarks are invaluable when conducting a community survey. They provide insights into your community’s standing compared to others.

For instance, you may not expect high satisfaction scores when tackling a thorny issue like property tax rates. However, understanding how you perform compared to similar communities can give you a clearer understanding of your situation and where you might do well or fall short on satisfaction scores.

But that’s the key – comparing your community to similar ones.

Off-the-shelf benchmarks may not be right for your community

Unfortunately, most firms offering benchmarks aggregate all their past studies over multiple years, regardless of how similar or dissimilar those communities are to yours. A few may filter by say, community size.

But consider these small towns . . .

• a small college town,
• a small farming town,
• or a small coastal town

They may be the same size, but they are all very different. They will all have different issues, challenges, and satisfaction scores. Benchmarks for “the same community size” may not be relevant or comparable to your community.

Another challenge with traditional benchmarks is the recency of the data . . .

How recently was the data collected?

• Does your community have new issues and concerns due to Covid?
• What about due to higher interest rates?
• How about due to a political season? Or a local bond issue?

Many satisfaction firms lump their benchmark communities together and sell it to you as a one-size-fits-all solution.

True North offers a much-improved approach.

With your input, we will identify a set of peer communities that are genuinely similar to yours or, even better, communities you aspire to or would like to emulate.

We will capture resident feedback from these communities using the exact same questionnaire at the exact same time.

Then, we will use these benchmarks to compare your community’s results.

• That is how benchmarking should be done.
• These are benchmarks you can trust
• These are benchmarks that genuinely provide insights.

Since we use the exact questionnaire, the cost can be amazingly low.

This is just one more reason why you can trust True North with your community satisfaction research.

After all, we’ve been named a “Most Trusted” market research firm.

If you want more information on why True North is a better solution for your community, click here.

Or click here to set up a call to talk.