Community surveys provide an assessment of the overall quality of life in a community. Helping local governments, nonprofits, advocacy groups, and businesses assess resident satisfaction, identify priorities, and gather data for informed decision-making. Follow 10 key steps from goal-setting to follow-up for valid, actionable results that drive community improvement.

In year 2017, a Kansas City community survey revealed that residents were dissatisfied with the city’s aging infrastructure. Acting on this, city officials proposed a pricey repair plan. Residents voted in favor, and the plan passed with a clear majority. The resulting $800 million infrastructure repair plan was the largest in the city’s history. This decision was driven by an assessment of community needs and priorities identified through the survey. Surveys can help local governments understand resident satisfaction with city services and identify their priorities. A community needs assessment helps identify resident priorities and the overall quality of life, providing valuable information for decision-making. Community surveys also allow local governments to compare results over time and against benchmarks from other jurisdictions, evaluate the overall quality of life, and conduct needs assessments. So, how did the city come to such a big decision? Simple – they just asked the community what they wanted, using an assessment of resident priorities and quality of life.

What is a Community Survey?

A community survey is a compilation of questions sent out, often through an online survey, to residents within a specific location. The goal is to understand residents’ concerns, attitudes, opinions, experiences, and needs. A successful community survey provides valuable insights into what the people want, thereby aiding in the local decision-making process.

In addition, many community leaders often feel they only hear a subset of opinions from certain people or stakeholders within the community. Community surveys are powerful tools because they can be used to engage everyone within the area, even those who aren’t typically active within the community. Well-written community surveys are knowledgeable about survey fatigue and aim to reduce it by being concise and relevant. The importance of selecting a random sample of survey participants is critical to ensure representative and valid data.

Take, for example, the American Community Survey (ACS). On a large scale, this survey helps officials, leaders, and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities. The ACS is the largest household survey administered by the federal government through the Census Bureau, sent to approximately 3.5 million addresses each year. The survey covers a random sample of households, which are randomly selected to ensure valid data. The data collected by the ACS includes extensive demographic characteristics such as age, income, education, and housing information, which are compiled into comprehensive data sets and used to generate estimates for counties, the nation, and local areas. The ACS’ annual survey provides vital information every year about the country and its people, highlighting the importance of the data collected for federal, state, and county planning. Information from the survey generates data that helps determine how more than $675 billion in federal and state funds are distributed each year, with estimates derived from the data set informing resource allocation at the county and national levels. The ACS has replaced the long form of the decennial census to provide more timely data collection. Through the ACS, community leaders know more about jobs and occupations, educational attainment, veterans, whether people own or rent their homes, and other topics. Public officials, planners, and entrepreneurs use this information to assess the past and plan the future. Survey responses from survey participants and survey respondents are analyzed to produce valid data and reliable estimates. On a local level, community leaders can emulate this type of survey to gain more

Who Should Conduct Community Surveys?

Community surveys provide information on the ethnic makeup of the community, its local languages, cultures, and even lifestyles. Of course, community surveys aren’t just about demographics; they also benefit various groups in different ways. For example, the ACS provides essential data that influences community planning for services such as hospitals and schools. ACS data is used by public and private stakeholders to allocate funding, track demographics, and plan for emergencies. Four groups that may use a community survey include:

• Local government offices. Governing bodies and public services rely on surveys to understand the needs of residents so they can come up with policies accordingly, such as in the surveys for community development that Kansas City sent out, which we highlighted earlier. These surveys help them understand people’s priorities and allocate budgets. They can also help them understand people’s concerns, such as with a police survey. Survey data is also used to identify areas where assistance or improvement is needed in city services, helping local governments enhance service quality and delivery.
• Nonprofits. These organizations may use community surveys to gain
• an understanding of people’s preferences regarding the issues they wish to support and how they want to extend their support.
• Advocacy groups. These groups may use surveys to learn more about how the community feels about key issues within the area that need to be addressed and solved. Surveys for community resources are also popular with advocacy groups, as they can help evaluate the effectiveness of community initiatives and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Local businesses. Finally, area businesses may use a community survey as a market research tool, gathering information about how locals feel about their products or services in order to make improvements, inform service improvements, guide new initiatives, tailor their products to specific needs, or expand their offerings.

10 Steps to Conducting Community Surveys

When you conduct a community survey, you want to get high-quality, actionable insights. Designing focused surveys is essential to ensure you collect valid data that truly reflects your community’s needs. To get there, you should follow ten steps. Telephone surveys, for instance, allow researchers to guide conversations to prompt valid responses, making them a valuable method for collecting reliable data.

1. Outline Your Goals

What are you hoping to accomplish with your community survey? Do you want to gather information on residents’ experiences, or are you looking for insights into their points of view on a particular issue? Outlining the main purpose of your survey will give you direction and help you streamline the rest of the data collection process. Setting clear and focused goals can also encourage more residents to participate in the survey, leading to more accurate and meaningful results. At this stage, you’ll also want to determine what is an acceptable sample size.

2. Set Benchmarks

What are the performance metrics for community surveys? That’s all based on what you hope to achieve. You may want to consider how many people need to respond to your community survey to make it representative of the population at large. The importance of achieving high response rates cannot be overstated, as high response rates help ensure that survey responses are representative and that the resulting estimates are accurate. So, by setting a benchmark, you’ll know whether your survey was a success when it concludes. On the other hand, if you do not collect enough responses to hit your mark, you may need to send reminders or re-survey non-responsive people and offer an incentive, since lower response rates can impact the reliability of the estimates derived from the survey.

You also need to set benchmarks for the meaning behind responses. For example, say you’re sending out health community surveys in order to learn about whether residents have easy access to healthcare. You’ll base this on the proximity of the closest healthcare facility to their residence. Benchmarking will help you determine what’s good (less than 3 miles), what’s average (between three and five miles), and what’s bad (over five miles).

3. Choose Your Target Community

Are you conducting a community-wide survey, or are you looking at a specific audience? For example, if you’re surveying the community about the school system, you may only want to send your survey to families with school-age children. Of course, you’ll want to think carefully about this; in this example, you may still want to include everyone, as some people who do not yet have children but plan to may have very insightful thoughts on the education system in the area (it may even be why they moved to the area).

Other targets could be based on race, gender, income level, or level of education. When selecting participants for your survey or research, ensure they reflect the demographic characteristics of the community, such as age, income, and education, to provide a fair representation of that particular audience.

4. Consider Your Survey Questions Carefully

Next, you’ll want to write down all the questions that are necessary to get the insights you need. Your survey questions should be clear and direct, so it’s often best to choose closed-ended questions like multiple-choice questions, ratings, and Likert scale questions. Unless you have the time to analyze open-ended questions, in which respondents write in answers, you may just want to leave them out. A few other pointers:

• Create non-biased questions and always provide good, bad, and neutral choices.
• Make sure any range of numbers doesn’t overlap.
• Implement “skip logic” wherever necessary (this changes questions based on the respondents’ most recent answer if needed).
• Provide a good range of answers for multiple-choice questions, not just two options. Consider, for example, using highly satisfied, satisfied, neutral, disappointed, and highly disappointed.

Be sure to download our guide on How To Write Survey Questions Like an Expert for more.

5. Create a Shareable Mission Statement

You know why you’re conducting the survey, but will respondents? People are crunched for time these days, and many may not take the time to complete a community survey unless they understand the intent. By letting them know how the survey will benefit them, they’re more likely to take the time to respond. Including an open participation survey can further encourage engagement by inviting all residents to share their feedback, ensuring diverse perspectives are represented. A clear mission and respondent benefits will also allow you to forgo incentivizing the survey. After all, people will be interested if they know they stand to gain something by responding.