Have you ever thought about using a parent feedback survey to collect input from parents using your early learning service but then tossed the idea into the too time consuming or too hard basket?
Or perhaps you use them regularly as a way to show evidence that you are offering opportunities for families to ‘contribute to your service’. but you don’t really do anything with the information you collect other than file it in a folder and pull it out on an assessment visit?
Maybe you are already confidently using surveys and the information they provide in a number of different ways but would like to review your process to make it more meaningful yet less time-consuming.
No matter which stage you are at right now this article will give you the information you need to:
Not sure where to start? Let’s go through this together step by step. I promise not to have you running for the chocolate so stick with me Empowered Ed!
Collecting data from families using your service can seem daunting but it’s important to remember that you are not just ticking off a box because the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF Australia) asks you to. You also want to use the information you collect to inform your ongoing quality improvement and service delivery.
There are, however, many other ways that using parent feedback surveys can be useful to educators and early years services that you might not have thought about - I’ve listed just a few for you below to help you think outside the ‘outcome’ box a little.
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve.”
So we can see that collecting information via a survey process can be valuable and offer a wider scope than just providing you with ‘evidence of parent input’ but I’m not saying it’s always an easy process! Let’s take a look at some of the common challenges to using surveys so you are more aware and can feel prepared BEFORE you survey. This preparation will most likely lead to your survey responses offering more valuable and useful information in return!
You now know WHY & HOW feedback surveys can be useful and are aware of some of the challenges you might need to overcome, but how can you just get on with it and get that parent feedback rolling in?
I’ve put together a step by step process you can follow….or modify to create your own process better suited to your unique early learning setting and community.
There are no rules here - all I will say is that you want to first think about your WHY first - what do you want to know and when would make the most sense for you to collect this information. You will be using other family communication tools and strategies (hopefully!!) so you want to be mindful of not overwhelming parents with forms and feedback requests or it will just become background noise and you won’t receive the valuable information sharing you are looking for.
I like to use parent feedback surveys at these 3 stages of the year:
Hard copy or digital? It can be difficult to know what will work best for a service and their family community so I suggest trying both methods for the first few times then make a decision on what method regularly gives you the most valuable feedback to analyse.
However, for most early childhood services I recommend offering both options to parents especially if you are aware that not all of your parents have consistent access to the internet or digital devices.
Also consider introducing an option that allows the use of a more visual format if the service has a high number of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) families or you want to engage with and provide survey options for younger children (3- 6 yrs).
If you want to save yourself some valuable time then it can be very useful to set up and deliver a simple parent survey via online forms and tools. They are very easy to use and the free versions are all most services and educators will need so it’s a budget-friendly option too!
If you set up and deliver your parent survey online it will save you time and stress if you decide the following before you begin:
If you are currently a Subscriber to my Empowered Ed Member Hub and want a step by step guide to setting up your survey using SurveyMonkey you will find a simple walk-through video in your toolbox training section. Not yet a member? Join us here!
If you do prefer to work with hard copies or want to add it in as an additional way that parents can access your survey (which I recommend you do!) then you might want to try one of the following.
Just type your questions in, do some simple formatting and perhaps add in some images to make it more appealing then print ready to hand out or alternatively you could also email to parents (Word or PDF docs) or add to newsletters.
If you choose to use one of the hard copy options you will want to consider the following:
If you are not sure how to complete the steps and create your first online or hard copy survey form or just don't have the time to create a survey form from scratch you can use my editable survey templates inside Member Hub. Just modify questions to suit your own service type and community then save, print or email!
It is a good idea to include a variety of question types in your survey to give you the best chance of collecting useful feedback.
Why? Because you will find that some people only have time to check a box, others find multiple choice questions with their variety of answers easy to complete and others enjoy writing down more comprehensive answers and feedback to answer open-ended questions.
So your parent feedback survey could include any of the following 'types' of question formats. It's up to you to decide how many of each type to use within your survey.
I show you how to set up many of the options above in the Survey Monkey tutorial video inside The Empowered Educator Member Hub.
The more questions you ask, the less time your respondents will often spend on the answering part so keep it brief! You don't want them just 'speeding' through your survey to get it done and marked off their ‘to do' list.
Your aim should be to receive meaningful and reliable answers to your questions. In my experience, people tend to take more time answering questions on a shorter survey when compared to a longer survey - but this isn't always the case so why not test drive a few options first?
In general though, we know as educators that it can be difficult to hold a busy parent's attention for long, so when creating surveys I suggest aiming for people to be able to complete them (without rushing) in under 5 minutes - This usually relates to using 10-12 questions at most using a mix of open-ended question boxes, multiple-choice and ranking questions.
