End of Year Survey

[Scouting4Ever]

I am starting to put together our Pack's End of Year Survey. This is our second year and we did make changes to this years program based on the input from last year. We are going to do the same this year and asking more questions.

 

This is done through Surveymonkey and we are limited to 10 questions, though we can manipulate some of the "questions" and ask multiple "questions."

 

I would appreciate any input you could give, or questions that you would like to ask or be asked. Thanks for any input that you might provide.

 

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X83WK29

[Scoutfish]

The coolest part of the survey is the open dialog boxes where somebody can write down whatever.

 

To many surveys are limited to only what is asked, and closes off the ability for other concerns, ideas or thoughts to be shared.

[83Eagle]

This looks great to me. Some questions for you:

 

-What is your participation rate in the survey?

-Are these all anonymous or is there the option to include your info (I did not complete the survey, obviously)

-Any downsides based on your first year doing this last year?

[jhankins]

Awesome way to think outside the box.

 

83Eagle has some of the same questions I do.

 

 

[Scouting4Ever]

Thanks for the feedback and questions?

 

"The coolest part of the survey is the open dialog boxes where somebody can write down whatever."

 

I do like giving people the option to say anything. It helps get those thoughts that I would of never thought of. It also allows them to expand on what they might have said in the survey.

 

"What is your participation rate in the survey?"

 

Last year we had 12 out of 25 respond, so 48%

 

"Are these all anonymous or is there the option to include your info"

 

There is one that ask you to give your info if you want follow up. They are anonymous to the point that is does track the IP address, but we are not going to try and track it down.

 

"Any downsides based on your first year doing this last year?"

 

I do not think so. We did make some changes based on feedback. We changed the B&G to a cake and ice cream party, expanded our fundraising and organizing our popcorn prizes with the data collected.

 

 

[83Eagle]

I liked this idea so much I decided to tinker with the tool and based on that have some additional feedback.

 

I don't see any questions that I would add. In fact, I (personally) would probably drop the Yes/No section. I guess I'm thinking of the "time factor" and most of the answers to that can be discerned from responses to the multiple choice parts.

 

But...you may want to keep it in.

 

I also think that three multiple choice are fine: Excellent, Good, and Needs improvement. Because if it's just fair, it needs improvement, IMO.

 

Lastly, I added a "contact info" text box, with the message that "if you want to volunteer but want to take the survey anonymously, just send an email with your contact info to...."

[Scouting4Ever]

Thanks 83Eagle, I liked your "contact info" text box idea

[Scouting4Ever]

PS-I would love to see what you came up with 83Eagle

[83Eagle]

It looks pretty much like yours but it reflects our specific events, and it's shorter. I sent you a PM with a link.

[KISMIF_Works]

We have done this type of survey the past two years now. We offer a paper version at the Blue & Gold Banquet in February, which seems like a good time to reflect back on the scouting year and has a great percentage of parents in attendance already.

 

Last year I replicated an online version of the paper survey using zoomerang. We had about 30 paper entries and 10 online entries. What I noticed last year was that the paper entries were overwhelmingly positive feedback, so much so that perhaps none of them were negative. We received a few negative-type online entries, however. Perhaps the online option gave a parent or two who had basically dropped out of the program an opportunity to voice their opinion about why, which is a good thing.

 

Unfortunately zoomerang scaled back the features for the "free" service this year and I didn't have the time to repeat the online survey creation process using another service, so we went with just the paper version.

 

If you are interested in seeing our survey just PM me and I can email you a copy. For the most part I think it is similar to what you are using. In general we try to cover three categories:

 

1. Program - feedback on fun and value for meetings and events. This section is most like yours, I believe. We also ask a general question to get their feel for if there are not enough/just right/too many events. I always expect the feedback to lean towards "too many", but it's overwhelmingly "just right". I suspect my impression may be skewed by the fact that I'm not just attending events but also organizing them!

 

2. Communication - we try to find out what method parents rely on most (phone/email/web/handouts), and how our different methods are working. Last year we launched a website using the SOAR service with weekly email "blasts", so we want feedback on how parents like it (they love it). However last year we found that a considerable percentage of parents rely primarily on phone communication, so this year we piloted a "phone blast" service (CallingPost) and then solicited feedback about it in this year's survey.

 

3. Funding - here we are looking for feedback about current funding methods and potential changes. Last year we broke it all down for the parents on the survey and then asked a few questions. We typically ask for a modest amount of annual dues ($35) and do just the popcorn fundraiser, and for us it has typically been on a voluntary basis. We broke last year's popcorn sales down with a pie chart showing the percentage of scouts who sold (a) nothing, (b) something, and © at or above our suggested goal. We spelled out the popcorn revenue generated by the scouts as two numbers: (1) the average per scout who sold at least something, and (2) the average over all scouts. We then asked if they were happy with things as they currently are, and what they thought about a couple proposals. Proposal #1 was to charge more for annual dues ($65) but refund part of it back if the scout reached his popcorn goal, and proposal #2 was to keep the annual dues the same but award a certificate to each scout who reached his goal that he could use as payment towards Pack events. The feedback for proposal #1 was about 50/50, but was more like 80% positive for proposal #2. Based on that feedback we rolled out proposal #2 this year and used this year's survey to get feedback about how parents liked it.

 

Our website has the ability to accept PayPal payments, so we got feedback about that opportunity in this year's survey. Based on the feedback we received it seems that few parents would use PayPal, so we probably won't go any further with it. In this case the survey saved us some time setting up and promoting a payment system that people wouldn't use.

 

[mdlscouting]

I'm normally really big on online stuff, but for our survey, I went old school, pen and paper. I had the last half of our pack meeting as a parents meeting, where I solicited feedback, and twisted some arms for volunteers for next year.

 

It's a lot easier to get participation when you have them there in front of you as a captive audience.

 

We had a form where one side was a Feedback survey, and the other side was a Parent Talent Survey, so we kind of knocked out two birds with one stone in that meeting.

 

But If you like the online form format, look into Google Docs. They have a Form feature that allows as many questions as you like, no 10 question limit.