Administer the Assessment

Key Actions

• Involve your entire community in your response pool, not just frequent recreation center and park users.
• Identify an administration model that will ensure a high response rate.

A core part of any park and recreation agency’s mission is improving the health and wellness of the whole community, regardless of age, ability, gender, race or any other attribute of those served by your organization. Unlike a customer satisfaction survey in which you specifically survey only those engaged in a specific recreation activity or facility, you will want to hear from the widest possible swath of your community to make sure you receive the fullest picture possible of the needs of your town, city or county.

How to Reach Non-Users and Underinvested Community Members

Your agency likely has fans among community members — those who engage frequently with your programming or residents whom you see regularly at your parks or recreation centers. Look through your current program and facility registration data to identify your regular users. Then, just as importantly, determine who is not currently engaged with your programs.  

A variety of factors can contribute to why some residents are not engaging with parks and recreation: lack of interest in current programming, too much going on in their lives or socioeconomic factors that lead to community members being underinvested. Make sure that you are involving seniors, those living with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color and non-English speakers in your assessment process so that your response pool represents the most diverse cross section possible of the population of your city, county or town.

There are a variety of ways you can administer your survey. For a primer on the pros and cons of various administration methods, visit the NRPA Customer Feedback Survey resource.

Here are a few tips focused on reaching underserved residents during your assessment process:

Weighting Survey Responses After Data Collection

How do you know if the responses you garnered from your survey are representative of your community? First, pull demographic data about your community so that you have a sense of its total population and diversity with respect to age, gender, race and ethnicity and other demographic characteristics. Use the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Fact Finder to find data for your community. You can search for your town or city and then select data from a large menu of sources, the most comprehensive of which is the General Population and Housing Characteristics table under the ‘2010 Census’ header (which the Census Bureau will update in coming years once the 2020 census is complete).

For example, based on census data, the fictional community of Springfield has a larger African American population than is reflected in your assessment responses. Consequently, you will need to weight the survey responses so that this group’s views are accurately represented in the feedback.

Weighting responses is a complex task. At a high level, weighting involves one or more statistical methods used to increase or decrease the weight — or emphasis — that a particular group of respondents has on the entire pool of responses. NRPA suggests that you consult a local university or research organization that can assist in this process.

After you weight responses, it is possible that your community’s activation, satisfaction and needs could look quite different, making the “weighting” a vital step before you analyze and take action on your data.

As you can see from the example above, after weighting responses to accurately reflect Springfield’s population demographics, the community’s views on agency fitness opportunities are slightly more negative. For a primer on weighting, see the articles provided by Pew Research and Applied Survey Methods - A Statistical Perspective.

How to Achieve a High Response Rate

One of the most important factors in achieving high response rates is the length of your survey. Keep your survey as streamlined as possible, recognizing that with needs assessments you want to cover a few different bases with your questions (e.g., activation, satisfaction, needs and priorities).

In addition, consider what administration method makes the best sense for your assessment. Does your agency have any upcoming in-person events where community members could complete the survey in person? Do you have email lists that include other residents besides those who already engage with your recreation centers and parks?

See step four of our NRPA Customer Feedback Survey resource for more details on how to gain a high response rate from a broad range of your residents.