How to Collect Data at Your School

HOW TO COLLECT DATA AT YOUR SCHOOL

Healthy Schools Certification Connection - Step 2: Assess Your School Community Needs and Assets

How to use this tool?

This tool has been designed to help your school conduct effective and informative surveys to establish their needs and assets. Assessing the needs of your school is important for generating the school’s health-focus and guiding the direction of school-wide initiatives. Also, determining assets can help your school identify existing resources that can facilitate additional school programming and maximize the school’s healthy active living capacity using what you already have!

How can I conduct a survey?

Establish the platform(s) to conduct the survey

Focus Groups
Drop-In Feedback or Concern Boxes
School-Wide Events
Online/Paper Surveys

Certain platforms may be more suitable for certain groups

Kindergarten students may not be able to fill out paper/online surveys however, older students can help administer focus groups that can identify the needs of the younger students through short conversations, or using stickers, or thumbs up/down, or drawing, that way all voices are heard
Intermediate and senior school students may respond best to a school-wide or class-wide discussions or forums about current school strengths, potential gaps, and desired improvements
Shyer students may prefer privacy when communicating where they see potential gaps, or expressing their health focus interests, therefore online surveys may be the best option
Parents may be more easily reached through online surveys
Surveys dealing with sensitive topics may be best administered in a private, anonymous session in combination with focus groups of students, staff, and/or family or community partners who feel comfortable participating

Choose a Location

Offer the surveys in multiple locations or during different events

During the school day, worked into curricular content
Before/After the school day
Staff Meeting Discussions
Student/Parent Council Meetings
School Events (i.e. parent teacher night, athletic events etc.)

HOW TO COLLECT DATA AT YOUR SCHOOL

Below are some free online survey tools:

Survey Monkey: 10 questions, 100 respondents, 15 question types & light theme customization and templates
Typeform: Unlimited questions, unlimited answers, data export, custom design themes or choose from templates, good for esthetics & basic reporting
Google Forms: Unlimited surveys, unlimited respondents, survey answers and data are automatically collected in Google Spreadsheets, lots of theme options, can add your own custom logo, can add images or videos, embed survey into emails or website & 100% free!
Zoho Survey: Unlimited surveys, 15 questions, 150 respondents
Survey Gizmo: Unlimited surveys and questions, 50 respondents, several basic question types, free templates & basic reporting
Survey Planet: Unlimited surveys, unlimited questions, unlimited respondents, survey theme options, & survey embedding

Tips for Conducting the a Comprehensive Survey

Inclusiveness is important for a complete and representative needs and assets assessment:
Maximize participation, multiple platforms and locations can increase the input and feedback
Survey a diverse sample (who your interview), i.e. include parents, teachers, staff, students & the community
Conducting the survey online (compared to just a hard copy) will increase the number of participants & can make reviewing the data easier
However make sure the survey is available for those who cannot fill it out online
Having tablets, paper surveys or comment boxes, on hand during school events or parent council meetings for example, are a good way to increase the participation
Set a firm deadline and send out reminders, life is busy & people do forget!
Schedule a forum or allot time to fill out a survey during class, even if it is 10-15 minutes
Focus groups allow for follow-up questions and deeper understanding of the perspective of the participants

What should I include in the survey?

If you chose to conduct a survey have a discussion about what information you’re trying to learn and how that information may be used.

HOW TO COLLECT DATA AT YOUR SCHOOL

What do you want to identify from this survey?

*Check out our survey template from the Healthy Schools Support Tools (HSST) page for some suggestions

It is up to your school to decide what to ask to evaluate your needs and assets but here are some suggested topics:

Simple demographic information
How are they part of the school community? Student, staff, teacher, parent, community volunteer etc.
For students include age or grade
For parents include age or grade of child(ren)
For teacher/other staff include role in school (if possible while keeping it anonymous if desired)
Clarify language
Understanding what “healthy” means to the school community can help shape initiatives and programs
Ensure that any buzz words or trendy language (think “well-being” or “stress”) is defined or that you’re asking for definitions to ensure that you get a clear picture of what participants are saying
Health topic importance?
Identify what health topics are important to your school community
Health is not limited to physical health; health can range, from to physical to social to mental to spiritual health to safety.
Suggest a list of potential health topic, again they can range from physical activity, to bullying to leadership to social media safety to stress to nutrition to school climate.
Include an open section for health topics personal to the participant that may not have occurred while creating the survey
Health topic focus?
Identify specific areas of health or well-being that the school would like to focus on the most during the school year
Consider the Health School Certification six priority health topics (for Step 3: Identify Your Priority Health Topic)
Physical Activity
Healthy Eating
Mental Health
Personal Safety and Injury Prevention
Growth and Development
Substance Use, Addictions and Related Behaviour
Consider including an Activities/Events Section
Programs/events that are currently enjoyed/not well received?
Are programs/event that have potential or have been successful at other schools?
Are there new program/events suggestions?

HOW TO COLLECT DATA AT YOUR SCHOOL

Who has strengthened the health /well-being at your school?
Community leaders?
Community groups (i.e YMCA)?
Teachers/ other staff?
Parent volunteers?
Students?
Government (i.e. public health, police)?
Organizations (i.e. OFSAA)?
Who could you involve to this upcoming year to strengthen the health /well-being at your school?
Could you incorporate any of the above groups/individual or could you increase the support from any of the groups/individual?

Additional Tips

If you are using a survey tools:

Many of the free survey tools offer limited questions, so make the questions clear and concise
Offer a combination of question types, i.e. scale questions, ‘select all that apply’ & written questions
Surveys that are too long can lose the interest of those being surveyed, keep it simple

If you are using forum, workshops or focus groups:

Again, these platforms are typically best if you want to start a discussion to get a deeper understanding on different topics or if the target audience cannot fill out a survey
For younger audiences keep the questions simply and list/condense the answers into bullet points
For example:
Who knows what health means?
What do you do to be healthy? Or what activities make you feel good? List possible health topics for youngest groups
What does not make you feel as good?
How can you be healthy at school?
Are there other activities you would like to do to be healthy at school?
For older audiences start with basic questions and elaborate:
For example:
What does good health mean to you?
How does the school currently support good health?
Where are the gaps? Is this where you would like to focus efforts?
What programs could be used to support this health focus?
Who can support this good health in the school community?

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