Gathering Feedback
Satisfaction surveys can be useful tools to build connections and capture some great insights from your students, families, teachers, and staff. Satisfaction surveys can also aid in your recruitment efforts by helping match your messages to student and family interests, collecting testimonials from families to use in your recruitment efforts in the future, and gauging your program’s retention rate so that you can plan for the coming school year.
Conducting routine surveys also provides your team with the valuable opportunity to investigate and address any issues or concerns head-on and communicate proactively about how you plan to tackle them, helping you to make important updates that can improve retention.
Need some ideas to get started?
We've created some sample questions for both families and staff that you begin building your surveys with.
5 strategies to increase survey response rates from your school community
No matter what type of survey you are conducting, you’ll need a good response rate to gather enough data to best represent your community. Here are some tips to help increase participation for your next survey.
- Get Your School Community Involved Early
Allowing your community to weigh in on what they’d like to share in the survey allows you to get feedback on the areas that matter to them, which also makes them more likely to participate. This has the added benefit of helping you with the next tip. - Create Buzz and Awareness
Using all of the channels available to you is the best way to get the word out. Using a combination of channels—text, newsletters, flyers, and social media—can help ensure that your survey is seen. - Offer an Incentive
Letting participants know not only that their voice is crucial in providing valuable information but also that their feedback will be acted upon can be a great motivator. You can try other ideas, such as offering a prize for the class with the highest participation or a schoolwide reward, for reaching a response goal to sweeten the deal, as well as create more interest. - Keep It Brief
Keeping your survey brief and communicating that to your participants will ensure that responses come from a larger group that isn’t skewed by only the recipients with the most time, patience, or motivation—whether it is overly negative or positive—to complete a long survey. - Send Multiple Reminders
Sending multiple reminders at different times throughout the survey window using multiple channels can also ensure that you get everyone’s attention. Experiment with sending reminders at different times of day and on different days of the week.
RESOURCES
Sample Survey Templates
Here are some example questions that you can download and use as a starting point to build your own surveys. Mix and match or customize these questions based on your objectives and program.
