just asking questions

People underestimate how much other people think like they do. As a person who creates things, one of the scariest questions I can ask someone is, "so... what did you think?" I'm not afraid of negative feedback so much as I am of feedback on something I don't want. So why does a person respond to a questionnaire differently than they do an email asking for ideas? Why might they not respond at all? How does that change what we learn about a program or service that we offer?

I find that when we ask people what they think, we aren't prepared for all the ways they can answer that question. We can make the feedback process easier and more useful when we begin with intention.

I carry three goals into any feedback-gathering process. I use these for interviews, community engagement, surveys, you name it. I ask people for information I can use. I ask them for feedback in ways that encourage them to respond. And I leave room for the unexpected. I'll explain.

something we can use

Some people will ask for feedback first and then figure out what to do with it. What's hard to use?

Feedback that we can't use. Imagine you're facilitating a difficult conversation with a group of constituents. The day goes okay, with some tense moments, and you send everyone a link to the evaluation. The first one you get back is blank except for the words, "the pens were too hard to write with." Not very useful, is it?

It might be! What if the pens were so hard to use they made people grumpy? Or the ink dried out to the point that people wrote slower and lost what others were saying? Work with the decision-makers for the service you're designing your questions for. What changes can we do? What's off-limits? Why? Is it too hard, too complex, or are there tangible limitations we could fix?

Feedback we can't use immediately. Some organizations don't conduct surveys that often. When they do, they want to cram in all kinds of questions about their constituents. These questions do more than burden their respondents. They give us a bunch of useless information that we have to sort through later. I once worked for an organization that wanted client feedback. They planned an elaborate evaluation complete with surveys, focus groups, and interviews. They began to collect all this information, but they hit a snag. They hadn't yet hired anyone to interpret the data. It would take months to hire and onboard them before the real analysis could happen. Months can be a lifetime when reports are due or funding is at risk.

No matter how simple your study is, I always recommend a data management plan. Harvard has a resource list explaining data management plans in great detail. It might be too complicated for most projects. At their core, a data management plan answers these questions: what are we asking, why, and who will handle it? For electronic data or personal information, safeguarding that information is even more important.

What can we use? What are some questions that can help us right now? "Tell us about your experience getting registered today. What felt difficult about the process?" Or, "how did you hear about us? What were all the steps you had to take to get here today?" These are still open-ended questions, but we put them in context so people know what we're looking for.

giving people a reason to respond

In most situations, people are most likely to give feedback when they're very angry or very happy. How can we generate responses to our gentle queries? As a rule, we don't want to make anyone mad. I've found varying levels of success with all these ideas. I'll start there and go by increasing usefulness (to me as the asking party).

Offer many methods of feedback. Interviews are great for detail, but who has time for them? Hour-long focus groups aren't for everyone. I like to create one-question visual displays ("put a sticker on this poster to mark your favorite veggies" at a food bank). I like to offer short surveys. And I like to conduct those interviews. Each gives me information on what matters in ways that no method could capture alone.

Provide incentives. These are often gift cards or stipends. I'd add that being a persistent researcher is another. Some people will respond if it means I stop bugging them. Snacks and meals during meetings aren't incentives. If we're working with someone long enough that they'll need food, it's not payment for their time.

Show how and when we'll use their feedback. Be clear about why we're asking and what we're planning to do with their information.

Keep it short. Simple. Fast. Easy!

Offer them the ability to influence how we make changes. I'd be careful with this one. It can work very well. My preferred way to improve a program or service is with direct involvement of the community. But we have to be mindful of who we're asking and who will show up. We may select for the same biases that we already have. Think about a focus group that is "open to all." In truth, it's only open to people who are available at that time. It's only for people who are willing to take part. But those respondents might be from a group that's already well engaged. They already get the emails; they already speak up in line or in meetings. Like with any situation, be careful about who our actions and biases allow in and who they don't.

leave room for the unexpected

I want my quasi-scientific evaluation methods to keep a bit of whimsy to them. One of my favorite ways to close an interview is this: "is there anything you wished we had asked you about?" Sometimes I hear things that get to the root cause of an issue. Or it's information I hadn't considered. Sometimes it's not relevant, but it helped that person to get it off their chest. Another one might be, "if a friend of yours asked you for advice getting started, what would you tell them?"

don’t collect what you can’t use

Our programs and services exist within communities of people. They deserve our time not because they choose to stop and talk to us but because they're a part of that community. It's our responsibility to ask thoughtful questions that we create with intention. It's our job to find ways to adapt our services to meet their needs. Community-driven projects deserve the funding and data they need to do this themselves.

We live in systems that are too complex for a single person to change them. But we also live in systems that exist the way they are precisely because someone made them that way. Our obligation is to make sure those decisions are well-informed.