Phase four, option 2 - survey your colleagues

Owned by Nicole Mc Neilly
Last updated: Aug 17, 2023
3 min read

Pros: another opportunity to test your data collection skills; captures anonymous opinions; fast turn-around in terms of input; survey software is readily available. 

Cons: anonymity is challenging in a small team setting; you have to analyse and report on the collected data which takes time.

Sending a questionnaire is one of the easiest ways to collect feedback from a small or large group of people. Questionnaires are commonly used in evaluation and impact assessment and we go into detail about questionnaires in questionnaires in Phase two of the Impact Playbook. We will not to duplicate Phase two’s guidance here, but set out the key steps you should take if you want to send an evaluation questionnaire. 

About questionnaires

Very simply, you can survey your colleagues by using a questionnaire. A questionnaire is an online or paper form that allows you to ask the same questions to a large number of people. You use it when you want to ask a lot of people the same questions (that is, to survey them) to effectively compare experiences and get a good overview of their experiences. 

Key steps to create your evaluation questionnaire

  1. Agree the platform that you will use to send the questionnaire (there are many, such as Google Forms, Survey Monkey, Tally, Typeform, etc). 

  2. Agree and add your evaluation questions (take a look at our evaluation questionnaire case study below or the Europeana standardised question bank). 

  3. Test your questions. 

  4. Add relevant accompanying information, like what you will do with the data, your approach to data protection and privacy, the closing date of the questionnaire, and/or how long it will take to complete the survey. 

  5. Finalise your formatting and branding. 

  6. Test your questionnaire with someone or some people who haven’t previously seen it (fresh eyes). 

For more guidance, see Phase two of the Impact Playbook and our guidance on writing a questionnaire.

https://europeana.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CB/pages/2314600560

Writing the questionnaire

You can ask a series of questions to your colleagues. You could use the questions in the debrief exercise. You can also learn from what we did. When we were trialing different approaches to Phase four we asked a series of different questions and we list these below as an example.

Europeana case study - a Phase four questionnaire

Please rate your experience. Working on an impact assessment(s) has: [satisfaction scale from completely agree to completely disagree, and N/A option - we used a matrix question format]

  • Had a positive effect on my work.

  • Made me think more about how my work contributes to sectoral impact.

  • Had little effect on my work.

  • Encouraged me to use an impact approach more often in my work.

  • Encouraged me to share our approach to impact with others outside of the organisation.

If you wish, please explain your answers above.

[open text question]

Please respond to the following statements

[yes / no / N/A]

  • I have used the impact assessment report(s) findings in some way.

  • We could do more to learn from the impact assessment report(s). 

  • I have shared the findings with others in the organisation or elsewhere.

What do you need to make it easier to use and share the findings of the impact assessments? Please share recommendations if you have them. 

[open text question]

How would you describe working on the impact assessment(s)? You can think about, for example, your personal development and professional practice and whether or not you enjoyed the process.

[open text question]

How would you rate your confidence level in impact assessment?

[scale from 1 - not confident at all to 5 - completely confident]

On reflection, we could have been more specific in this question, asking instead about their confidence in collecting the data and/or the usefulness of the results. 

If you have any other thoughts, recommendations or feedback, including ideas on how to improve how we use impact assessment at Europeana, please share these here.  

[open text question]

What we learned

We learned that the approach helped everyone involved think more about how their work contributes to sectoral impact. Other results were also broadly positive, but it did show us areas where we should pay more attention, in particular: 

  • We need to communicate impact findings more clearly, including using more visualisations and easy-to-share ways of presenting the data. 

  • We should collate the findings of all of the impact reports, and think about the bigger narrative that can be drawn out from them. 

  • We need to more clearly communicate the value that the Europeana Impact Framework approach can bring to colleagues’ work. 

  • Colleagues would benefit from more training on impact assessment. 

Next steps