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Top 10 tips for conducting an effective community consultation

  1. Make sure your consultation has a clear purpose. Be prepared to explain the purpose to the people you speak to.
  2. Consider how you will use the data when you are forming your questions. Whilst it is important to get people’s opinions, you do not want to be left with 150 sentences that you need to summarise. Use a mixture of options and open questions.
  3. Keep it succinct. No one wants to be stood on the door step for 30 minutes. Don’t ask questions for the sake of asking.
  4. Know your community.
  5. Make sure you focus on your hard-to-reach groups. They may require a more unique or creative approach to access them, but without them you cannot claim to reflect the views of the community.
  6. Choose your methods carefully. Postal questionnaires are largely a waste of time. People do not have anyone there to ask the purpose, many households may have basic skills issues and it is easy to claim ‘we sent it back’ if anyone asks. Door-to-door, focus groups, face-to-face-interviewing where people congregate such as the school gates, interactive sessions at meetings.
  7. Assess risk. If you are going door-to-door ensure you assess risk, inform the police what you are doing and abide by your lone working policy.
  8. Feedback your results. Remember to feedback the results of your consultation to those with whom you have consulted so they are aware how the information was used.
  9. Collate all results. Consider collating all consultations in a central place which everyone can access. This will avoid duplication.
  10. Have a large sample. Ensure your sample is large enough and broad enough to be representative and allocate sufficient times for this. Door-to-door you may need to return to the same address more than one.

This entry was posted on Wednesday 20th June 2012.

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