Implementing your project
Tools and templates
Here are the types of issues you need to consider when planning an engagement event.
- What is the most suitable qualitative approach?
- Who do you need to engage with?
- How will you recruit them?
- What type of venue are you going to use?
- When are you planning on holding the event?
- What time of day should you hold the event?
- Have you told participants where the event will be?
- How will you structure the event?
- Do you need additional facilitators?
- Have you sorted out the practicalities for the day?
- How are you going to record what happens at the event?
- How will you analyse the outcomes?
- How will you report and disseminate the findings?
- How will you ensure the findings have an impact?
- Whose views do you need to hear from?
- Do you know how to reach them? You will need to understand sampling to make sure you are accessing the people you want.
- How will you ensure that your survey is an accurate reflection of the wider population's views? You will need to have a good understanding of statistical theory to be confident that your survey design will produce accurate results
- How are you going to carry out the survey? Postal? Phone? Face to face? Different approaches have different 'hit' rates and costs
- Who is going to carry out the survey? Do you have the skills and capacity in-house or do you need to commission external experts? Designing a survey, delivering it and analysing it are complex tasks
- What types of questions are you going to ask people? 'Closed' questions of a yes/no type are easier to analyse and cheaper than open 'questions'
- How long is your survey going to be? The longer the survey, the more expensive it will be to analyse
- How will you analyse the findings? The results from surveys are often initially presented as tables of statistics. Do you have the skills to accurately interpret these? To make analysis easier, the initial questionnaire needs to be 'coded', i.e. each closed question and each option needs to have a unique number. With the open questions, coding is done after the questionnaires have been returned.
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