Councils and government organisations are often under intense time pressure to complete community engagement projects, present the findings, and make decisions that can have a huge impact on their communities.
Earlier this year, an Australian local council ran into this problem, and Global Research teamed up with Melbourne-based research company, Cochrane Research, to help get things done.
“Patrick, Naomi and the Global Research Team are great to work alongside. The team understands the messiness of analysing personalised responses and the importance of transparently reporting the sentiment expressed in community consultations. By working collaboratively, we identified and refined a coding framework (themes/sub-themes) to analyse multiple datasets of community feedback that were complex and substantial. Once we got started, I was confident that the team would efficiently undertake the data analysis and reporting tasks within the agreed timeframes. I valued the opportunity to meet with the researchers involved in this project and the scaled pricing options were helpful as the volume of feedback was uncertain. I would highly recommend the analysis and reporting support services provided by the Global Research team.”
Background and aims
Global Research was contacted by Cochrane Research to work together on a large project for a local Victorian council. The project was to inform shaping the vision for a community from 2021 to 2040 and elicited over 2,500 responses.
Our role
Due to the size and depth of this engagement, Global Research was tasked with analysing and synthesising the huge volume of comments, while Cochrane Research focused on the reporting. Turning large quantities of written data into meaningful and quantifiable themes is our specialty and working alongside Cochrane Research allowed us to focus our efforts on presenting meaningful data to support the final report.
In a departure from our usual work, Global Research was not involved with the client liaison side of this busy, ever-changing project. This meant that while Cochrane Research communicated with the client and passed on requests for changes to be made, Global Research staff were able to dedicate our time and resources to the task at hand, resulting in quick turnaround of changes and adaptations to the report.
This was helped further by our time zone advantage. Being two hours ahead of Melbourne means that if Global Research receives requests for changes by the start of a working day, we have a two or three hour head start on our Australia-based clients, meaning that it is often possible to return a document with changes made before the Australian workday begins.
Design and method
Data was collected by the Council in the form of online surveys, paper surveys, and postcards which people could write on and send back to the Council. All of this data was compiled and sent to us in waves to be analysed.
All written (qualitative) feedback was processed by Global Research analysts who read each comment and sorted (coded) them into relevant themes and topics.
Due to the nature of the survey, each question that required a written response was analysed separately, and summary tables were created by Global Research analysts following the completion of the coding phase.
Because each individual comment was coded by Global Research analysts, our team developed a thorough understanding of the feedback and were able to create accurate and representative summary tables containing themes, topics, and the number of times each theme and topic were raised for each of the qualitative questions.
These tables were then passed on to Cochrane Research, who turned the summarised data into a comprehensive, easy to understand report, along with quantitative data findings to present to the client.
Result
A detailed report was passed on to the client in a very tight time frame, allowing them to see an accurate overview of all the feedback received from their community. Working in partnership with Cochrane Research on this project allowed us to achieve this excellent result for the Council in time for them to make the necessary decisions – quite a feat for a project with over 2,500 responses and such a short time period.
Outcome
The Council was well informed of the views and the hopes of its community for their future, and are currently using the insights uncovered during this research to develop programmes, policies and projects to guide the Peninsula’s strategic direction.