The best way to survey underserved, minority, or disadvantaged residents in your city satisfaction surveys.

We understand that communities and cities are concerned about understanding the needs of their minority and disadvantaged residents. They want to be confident that they are included in their city satisfaction surveys; thus, including their responses in surveys is important.

It used to be very hard to find these residents in survey research. We had to take special care and use different methods to capture their opinions.

Those days are gone.

The latest digital trends impact how we survey these residents

According to Pew Research, as reported by Statista, the penetration of smartphone usage in 2021 was similar across different ethnic and minority groups. Even the older population adopts smartphones at an increasing rate. A separate Statista report shows that in 2021, 61% of people over the age of 65 were using smartphones – and increasing at a rate of 7 to 8 percentage points a year. In addition, Pew Research also reports that in 2021, 76% of those making less than $30,000 per year have smartphones – and this increases 4% to 5% per year.

These figures suggest that mobile surveys are not only a valid option for capturing opinions from a broader, more representative audience; they may be the best way.

Of course, there is some common sense with this as well. Who do you know who enjoys sitting down to take a paper survey? Who even does that anyway? Yet, we are all on our phones. Even these typically hard-to-reach residents are on their phones.

In short, we need to go where they are and use the communication tools they use.

Unfortunately, many government agencies and city governments still use telephone and mail surveys to find these respondents due to a mistaken belief that these modes are required to find these hard-to-find respondents. When, in fact, these modes make it more difficult to capture a representative sample of these hard-to-reach respondents. And, of course, these modes have a number of methodological problems that we won’t go into here.

Designing mobile surveys takes more care

No one wants to take a monotonous, boring survey (which describes most paper surveys). And we know our audience has many more distractions than just a few years ago. Therefore, designing even online surveys as we did just a few years ago won’t work. We need to design them specifically for a smartphone.

Most online and even mobile surveys are still designed for a computer, not a smartphone. If we want smartphone users to take surveys, we must consider the layout and design the survey specifically for a smartphone.

Also, those with smartphones tend to have much higher expectations for an easy and intuitive user interface. Lots of grids of 5-point scales are not the most fun surveys to take. Many options exist beyond these batteries of scales. Besides, humans don’t make decisions on 5-point scales. They make choices. See our video on the 5 Biggest Problems with Scales.

A good smartphone design requires simplifying the user interface and avoiding overly complicated layouts. A good rule of thumb is to keep the survey brief, with clear questions that are genuinely engaging, understandable, and easy to answer.

Is your community still relying primarily on mail surveys? Are you relying on vendors who still execute their surveys the same way as back in the 1990’s? The good news is that utilizing smartphones in combination with additional methods will provide better data faster and at a lower cost. What’s not to like?

Gold Standard Benchmarking For City Satisfaction Surveys

The use of benchmarks within a City Satisfaction Survey can be very useful. Benchmarks are an excellent method of comparing your city to those similarly situated, capturing and tracking data over time, and ensuring your government properly functions in a way that the evolving public demands of its residents.

What you do NOT want to do is simply use the “off the shelf” bencmarks provided by your research vendor.

Bad benchmarks mean bad data, and we must have good data to make representative public policy.

If your city is a college town, then you should compare yourself to other college towns. If you are a larger mid-west city, you should compare yourself to other larger mid-west cities. You get the idea.

The problem is that most “benchmarking data” comingles of all types of cities. It represents this “average” city that does not exist. If you are a small coastal town, do you really want to be compared to Phoenix? That is what you get with most off-the shelf benchmarking results. To make it worse, this data may be several years old.

Bad benchmarks can result in bad decisions. they can lead to the wrong indicators of performance measurement and create situations in which government officials are held to unreasonable and inaccurate standards. 

How can you tell a good benchmark from a bad one?

Consider the following questions:

  • Is the comparison fair? Did you know that different ethnic groups respond differently to surveys? Hispanics, for example, tend to give higher scores. Is your ethnic makeup similar to that used in the benchmark? And how do you know?
  • When were the measurements taken? And how much of a role does time play in the accuracy of the measurement? For example, a measurement taken before COVID is wildly different for many data points. After all, the ongoing pandemic altered countless aspects of our lives and governance. If your benchmarks don’t account for these changes, they’re worthless. 
  • What are you measuring? What you want to ask may not be included in benchmarking studies. After all, is your city like all others?
  • How old are the benchmarking scores? Satisfaction scores tend to increase over time as everyone tries to improve. Benchmarks from an older set of data may not be valid for today.  Many firms will use benchmarks from cumulative data over a span of 5 years.

Better Benchmarking

A much-improved benchmark is one that  . . .

  • Uses the exact same questionnaire.
  • At the exact same time as your resident survey.
  • In very “like” markets. Markets that are very similar to yours.

This is what we do at True North. We execute your City Satisfaction Survey in like markets at the exact same time. This data becomes your true apples-to-apples comparison point — the gold standard. From there, we track results over time, enabling you to get robust answers showing how data moves against benchmarks over time. 

And this process does not need to cost much more.  Most of the study costs are already covered (fixed study costs including questionnaire design, programming, survey methodology, and more).

This is just one more reason why True North has been named a “Most Trusted” Market Research Company. You can trust us to deliver true insights to you – not just data.

When Spanish Isn’t Spanish

Parker Pen’s slogan claimed: ‘It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.’ However, when introduced to the Spanish market, the slogan said, ‘It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.’  Just in case, I’d rather use a pencil!

Have you ever noticed how vastly dialects differ here in America? Not only do different parts of the country have different manners of speaking (“Howdy, y’all!” as opposed to “Wassup!”), but each corner of the nation can even have its own terminology. In really rural places, you might ask, Is that even English?

Guess what?

Other countries are the same way!

The US, Canada, and Britain all speak English, but if you asked someone in the US, “Do you have a tire in your boot?” people might wonder what you mean.

Deivy is a friend of mine from the Dominican Republic who greets close friends with “Que lo que.” Our True North Hispanic lead, Alejandra, on the other hand, is from Mexico and is not familiar with this colloquialism.

And then there’s Yarima, our Operations Manager. If Alejandra said “¡Qué padre!” Yarima might tilt her head to the side, brow wrinkled, pondering what Alejandra could mean.

They’ve all told me it’s essential to be careful what you say – and what you print – because some Latin American phrases (that we’ll not print here!) can have multiple meanings depending on the country or origin.

What Are We Getting At?

Latin American countries with a native Spanish-speaking tongue are just like their northern counterparts – they also have their own slang and dialects. Some pockets in certain countries even have words that aren’t spoken elsewhere.

If you’re not entirely familiar with Spanish or the various countries’ dialects, Hispanic marketing is challenging – it’s something you have to nail at the very beginning, or you risk alienating the same people you’re trying to reach.

Gauge the quality of your materials by reaching out to Spanish speakers from different regions before you click Send.

Here’s another example of not understanding the language:

When Coors introduced it’s cool ‘Turn It Loose’ campaign to the Spanish market, the translated version of the slogan sounded like ‘Suffer from diarrhea.’  I think I’ll pass on that beer; thanks!

Not all Spanish is the same.

Hopefully, you haven’t found out the hard way that Google Translate returns literal “translations” between languages, not always accounting for the transposition of adjectives and nouns – much less for the distinction between Dominican and Mexican Spanish. Of course, this makes marketing to Spanish speakers difficult. This is also why good Hispanic marketers are worth their weight in gold.

Unfortunately, some marketers learned the importance of proper translation the hard way:

  • The La Puta was a Mazda model in the 1970s. However, it means “whore” in Spanish. The advertisement said that “Laputa is designed to deliver maximum utility in a minimum space while providing a smooth, comfortable ride” and “a lightweight, impact-absorbing body.” No wonder why it cracks a smile in the streets!
  • American Airlines decided to use its successful campaign “Fly in leather” in Mexico. It was translated to “Vuela en cueros,” which invites passengers to fly naked. No comment here!

One more?

  • Why would the American Dairy Association translate its slogan ‘Got milk’ to “Are you lactating?” in Spanish?

Here’s why this means something to you:

  • Are you planning to put Spanish on your product labels?
  • Do you want to create Spanish versions of other marketing materials?
  • Do you want to conduct Spanish Speaking market research studies?

Well, by now, you know you can’t just use Google Translate to change your materials to Spanish. Qualtrics, the questionnaire programming software, even has a feature to change English materials to Spanish — but if you go down that path, make sure you’re not alone.

At True North, all of our Spanish speaking market research surveys must meet the approval of our native speakers from different countries. Do you have this kind of backup on your marketing team? They proof materials to ensure the language makes sense for all Spanish-speaking audiences. And if they’re stumped? We call Deivy.