What Does Your Community Think? Creating a preliminary community survey

Do residents of your community believe high-speed broadband has become an essential service, or do many people still consider it a luxury? Are people satisfied with the service they’re getting, and if not, what are their primary complaints? How do these answers vary based on age and other demographic factors?

While many communities want a statistically valid survey completed before committing to construct a telecommunications utility, a less rigorous survey in the earliest stages of a public campaign can serve to shed light on the community’s sentiment. Tools for conducting these surveys are easy to find and to use. One very easy to use platform is Jotform. Survey Monkey offers additional tools and a library of questions that have been tested for validity. At the far end of sophistication and cost are tools like Qualtrics, which can also provide statistical analysis.

Creating a survey meant to provide some insight into community sentiment isn’t difficult. The challenge is usually in disseminating it widely enough to get responses from a broad cross-section of the community. Here are some suggestions for doing just that.

Groups within a community maintain email lists and may be willing to include a link to your survey in their communications. Those groups can include many of those noted in our blog post about public speaking on behalf of your municipal telecommunications project and include service clubs,

churches, clubs for hobbyists, and economic development organizations. If you have close working relationships with local governmental entities like the school or city, they also may help disseminate the survey. Be sure to write up a description of the survey’s purpose and a contact person who can be reached if there are questions and to include that information along with your request.

Your local newspaper, if you’re fortunate enough to still have one, can also help draw attention to the survey. Just as we already mentioned, be sure to provide information about the purpose and a person for the news organization to contact. Social media is another excellent way to share the survey. Be sure to ask friends to share them to their pages, and make sure to include both where the respondent found the survey (for future planning) and also whether they live within the jurisdiction of the proposed utility.