COA adapts surveying process for efficiency, cost-effectiveness
As part of the accreditation process, the Council on Accreditation (COA) has long championed the practice of surveying organizations’ stakeholders through our Performance Quality Improvement Standards. For each organization, COA surveys a variety of stakeholders, including donors, board members, and service users. The feedback COA receives from those stakeholders is used to improve the organization’s service delivery.
Consumer feedback surveys and other similar quality improvement initiatives are, arguably, some of the most important activities within our standards because it promotes effective change within an organization.
Yet, surveying also requires significant time and resources. Organizations undergoing the accreditation process are asked to distribute the surveys prepared by COA to their stakeholders, and with stamps at $.44 each, these organizations collectively spend more than $50,000 each year. When stakeholders submit their surveys back to COA, it adds up to 1,200 paper surveys each week.
It’s All in the Design: Elements of Effective SurveyingFor more than 30 years, surveys have been an integral component of the Council on Accreditation’s (COA) operations. Each year COA creates and distributes nearly 100 unique surveys, including surveys which are distributed to a variety of stakeholders of organizations pursuing accreditation or reaccreditation. From that extensive experience, as well as COA staff members’ professional expertise in the area of survey design and implementation, COA has crafted 10 key steps to assist organizations with survey design. |
It’s clear to see that COA’s traditional survey process consumed a large amount of natural resources, cost a fair amount of money to operate, and required a significant commitment of human resources. Especially in this economy, finding an alternative was important.
In May 2009, COA successfully transitioned to a brand new, customized survey process that is completely phone and web-based. COA is using two separate survey providers, clicktools.com and angel.com, to deliver survey responses from all organizational stakeholders directly to our database.
This process is more cost-effective, streamlined, and less wasteful. In addition, COA staff can view and report an organization’s aggregate results in real time, and peer reviewers have a new and improved report format for analyzing results prior to the site visit. In short, this change promotes effective surveying.
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The Alliance's Severson Center offers free accreditation assistance to members. E-mail the Since COA’s founding in 1977, surveys from stakeholders of organizations pursuing accreditation have been an integral component of the accreditation process, and an invaluable tool for peer reviewers to gain insight into service quality.
Moving from paper surveys—some-thing clients were comfortable and familiar with—to an electronic process involved careful planning, testing, and implementation. Accessibility is a primary consideration; COA recognizes that while web surveys can be relatively inexpensive to administer, many social service clients do not have access to the Internet. Phone surveying, which until recently had been costly to implement, presents an alternative.
Learn more about COA’s new electronic survey process online, or e-mail the author.
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Timothy Stockert, MBA, MSW, is director of training and information technology at the Council on Accreditation. He oversees all of COA’s external and internal trainings, as well as all information technology needs. He can be reached by e-mail. |
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