Special districts are increasingly common across the United States, and most residents interact with them — without knowing it. Unless they work with them directly, many people don’t know much about the importance of a district in maintaining their quality of life. Finding out what your community knows, and how they perceive, your special district can be an eye-opening experience and guide your decisions down the road, particularly those that rely on public support.
So how do you do that? Through research. With today’s technology, research tools are available to you with the click of a button. By understanding how your district is perceived, you can identify strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement. This knowledge will enable you to make informed decisions, enhance community engagement and ultimately work toward creating a positive and thriving district.
Methodology: Mix It Up!
To comprehensively gauge community perception, the best approach is a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. This mixed-method approach allows for both numerical data and rich narratives, providing a well-rounded understanding of public opinion. Quantitative research, for example online surveys or intercept surveys, helps identify general trends and patterns, giving you results in percentages for a high level understanding of perceptions. Qualitative research, including focus groups or one-on-one interviews, delves into individuals’ thoughts, feelings and experiences by stimulating discussion and allowing you to probe deeper.
What kind of research you do will ultimately depend on what kind of special district you’re running and what your goals are. Sometimes budget or time constraints mean you can’t do it all and even a simple online survey can yield great information. But in general, a mixed-method approach creates the most well-rounded results.
Implementation: What To Do & How To Do It
We’ve outlined some general guidelines on how to get your research done. Follow this six-step how-to guide for your special district.
- Planning:
- Define your research goals and objectives: Clearly outline the specific aspects that you want to investigate. Is it general awareness of your programs and services? Or public sentiment?
- Develop a research plan: Determine your target audience and timeline for data collection.
- Determine your methodology:
- Surveys: Create online surveys through sites like SurveyMonkey or Google. If you, or distribute paper surveys in addition to online, be sure to have someone who can input that data into the survey platform, so all of your data is in one place and you can analyze as a whole. to collect quantitative data. Keep in mind that Include a mix of closed-ended questions (rating scales, multiple choice) are much easier to use in reporting data. Use and open-ended questions for additional insights, but we recommend limiting these for online surveys, as they take much more time to review and determine insights.
- Interviews or focus groups: Conduct qualitative research through individual interviews or group discussions to delve deeper into perceptions, experiences and suggestions. These can be done in-person or remotely. If you plan to organize a focus group, be sure to limit that to 6-8 people to encourage discussion and interaction. And keep it to 60-90 minutes to keep it lively and not impact your participants’ calendars more than necessary.
- Social media “listening”: Monitor online platforms to gain insights into public sentiment, opinions and discussions related to your special district. Here are some helpful tools.
- Identify research questions: Formulate questions that address the key areas of interest, such as satisfaction levels, awareness, reputation or specific district services. If you are designing an online survey, Survey Monkey offers many survey templates that can assist you in designing the survey, and it’s free if you keep the survey to 10 questions.
For a focus group, having discussion prompts to stimulate conversation is the key. And be sure to ask questions for input, then educate along the way. This way you get their initial impressions, but then can give them more information that can engage them into the future.
- Gathering Input:
- Online surveys:
- Allow up to two weeks to gather responses, keeping it open long enough for those on vacation to respond, and to promote and share the survey.
- Be sure to promote at the survey launch, midway through and at the end as a “last chance!” Use all communications channels to get the word out:
- Your district’s newsletter, an email to everyone in your database, social media posts, banner on your website, you can even put it in your email signature.
- Create a QR code that links to the survey and put on any printed collateral, or hand out at events like Chamber of Commerce meetings, service club meetings, etc.
- Focus groups can be conducted in a shorter amount of time, but more time is needed beforehand to prepare and afterward to compile results and pull together insights and find the threads in the data for your conclusions.
- Incentives and Engagement:
- Offer incentives: Consider providing an incentive (e.g., a drawing for a winner of a $100 gift card for a survey, or $50-$100 gift cards, or discounts on services) to encourage participation.
- Engage partners: Ask any partners or community organizations you have relationships with to participate in focus groups or help share the online survey to amplify your research efforts and encourage participation.
- Data Analysis and Reporting:
- Quantitative analysis: Analyze survey data using statistical tools to identify trends, patterns and statistical significance. Reports should use bullets to show key findings so it’s easy to read, and include graphs and charts to show the data visually. If your survey platform allows for cross tabs, you can slice and dice the data by demographics or other identifiers. This will help you customize future messaging for different audiences, based on what is important to them.
- Qualitative analysis: Thoroughly analyze interviews, focus group transcripts or social media conversations to extract key themes and narratives. Typically, a confidentiality agreement is signed at the beginning of the focus group, to ensure that participants can feel free to share their input and know it will be kept confidential. Participants should be informed about the agreement ahead of time, when they are asked to join a focus group.
- Report findings: Summarize the research findings, highlighting key insights, trends and actionable recommendations. Present the report to relevant stakeholders and share it with the community through various communication channels. It is also important to share the information with those who participated in the research, particularly if they were involved in a focus group. This helps them see where they made a contribution, and have more buy-in to future activities of your district.
- Continuous Improvement:
Recognize that perception is dynamic, and community opinions may change over time. Regularly assess and reassess perceptions to identify progress and adapt strategies accordingly. Create baseline data points that you can compare future survey results to, to see what is changing and what is staying the same.
- Evaluation:
Once you have implemented your research plan and taken steps to address the findings, it is crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of your actions and their impact on community perception. Evaluation helps determine whether your efforts have achieved the desired outcomes and guides future decision-making. This might be the most important section of all, so we go into more detail below.
Evaluation: A Continuous Cycle of Improvement
Once you get that initial baseline research completed and have a better understanding of your perception within your community, it’s never a bad idea to rinse and repeat. Research again to determine whether any changes in your outreach efforts have had an effect.
- Analyze the data: Conduct a thorough analysis of the collected data to assess changes in community perception and any other relevant metrics. Compare the results with the baseline data obtained during the initial research phase. Or, should this be your very first time at measuring community perception, compare what you’ve learned against what your special district stakeholders expected to learn from the data.
- Assess impact: Evaluate the impact of the actions taken based on the changes observed in perception and other identified metrics. Determine whether the initiatives have had the intended effects, and if not, identify any factors that may have influenced the results.
- Learn from the evaluation: Reflect on the evaluation results and identify lessons learned. Use this knowledge to inform future strategies, initiatives and communication approaches to further improve community perception.
- Iterate and adjust: Based on the evaluation findings and lessons learned, make necessary adjustments to your district’s practices, policies or communication strategies. Continuously monitor community perception and engage in ongoing research efforts to maintain a proactive approach in addressing evolving community needs and perceptions.
Good Research Is Never Done
Remember, evaluation is an iterative process, and it should be conducted periodically to ensure that your district’s actions are aligned with community expectations and to track progress toward your goals.
By following this research plan and implementing a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, you can gain valuable insights into your special district’s perception and take targeted steps to enhance community engagement and satisfaction.
If you’d like to learn more about best practices for planning and implementing research in your district, contact [email protected].