Don’t Let Your Research Stagnate

Adapted from a session given at the 2016 ASAE Annual Meeting & Expo by:

Michael Hayes, Managing Director, Research, Vault Consulting
Ian Santo-Domingo, Managing Director, Vault Consulting

Hayes and Santo Domingo talked about how to capture valuable data and used real-world examples of how best to share it with your members in this well-attended session. Santo Domingo said to think about research in terms of a continuous ecosystem, not as a linear project that just ends when research is completed.  The ecosystem, he said, is made up of five steps:

1. Collect staff, board and member input on how to structured your approach to the research.

2. Conduct the research.

3. Create an actionable report.

4. Promote it.

5. Evaluate your results.

It’s very important to get your marketing, promotion and membership teams involved from day one. Think about ways you can share results via press releases, conference sessions and research road shows.

Hayes added anything that can be done to make the data more interesting, visually appealing and understand, the better. Infographics showing a summary of the results has become one of the most effective ways to share top-line results. Don’t just explain what happened, but how it happened and why.

Finally, according to Santo Domingo, another big trend in data collection is using video capture to capture respondents answers to open ended questions. More your members are taking surveys on a mobile device. It’s much easier to have them tap a button on survey tool that allows them to record themselves on video answering open-ended questions than to type their answers in.