Skip to content

Use Research To Prioritize City Resources

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. 

Related Posts

Benchmark Image
Do you trust your benchmarks?
Buffalo image
Is your community like Buffalo, NY?

Solutions