Use This Document to Learn from the Experiences of Communities That Have Completed Action

Use this document to learn from the experiences of communities that have completed Action Phase 2: Assessin the Dementia Capable Communities Toolkit.See if the advice is a good fit for your community!

Get organized

Break the assessmentprocess down into manageable pieces.Be organized. Make lists and check off progress.
Ensure that collaborators understand the community assessment process so they will be motivated to assist with it. Spend time getting group members to talk about how this issue affects them/their organizations. Help the group see the commonalities of issues.
Identify a lead for the assessment process who will assign surveys to team members, collect and track completed surveys, and collect email addresses to create a mailing list for the public meeting.
Determine how surveys will be collected (email, drop off, etc.) and how people will get new ones when using paper copies.
Identify your detail-oriented personwho will enter the collected survey data into the ACT tools (e.g.,team lead, graduate student from a local college, computer-savvy facility receptionist).
Most communities recommend entering data as each sector’s surveys are completed rather than entering the data from all surveys all at once.
Report progress to the full Action Team.
Share how many surveys have been completed in each sector and how many yet to do. Discuss potential interviewees. Share interview experiences.

Develop goals and a timeline

Set a realistic goal for the number of surveys to be completed; it’s time consuming.
Establish a target end date.
Don’t let the process go too long—3 weeks or a month at the most.Otherwise, people procrastinate.
Set a slightly ambitious goal for completing the surveys and logging data. The sooner you get to analyze the data and make a plan, the more rewarding the experience will be for everyone involved.
Establish a target total number of surveys completed by the target end date.
Consider # of sectors x3 surveys in each sector as a starting point.Adjust as needed. Thenumber of organizations per sector will vary.
Set subsequent meeting dates at the first survey meeting.
Scheduling future meetingshelps maintain momentum and excitement. Communities thatset regular meetings completed their surveys in less than 3 months compared with 6-12 months for communities without regular meetings.Consider meeting every two weeks.
Use your goal for total surveys to set the number of surveys to be completed by each meeting date.
The first two team meetings usually are 1.5 to 2 hours to establish the process. Taper to 0.5-1 hour as the process gets rolling.
”Get the surveys out and lots of them! We thought we were doing ok, then we got together and saw that we were only halfway to our goal.”

Select who to survey

Decide which sectors to focus on and make sure all areas are covered for surveys.A shared interest community (e.g., faith, ethnic) will approach this differently.
For each sector survey, read the instructions to understand that survey. Then, have the whole team generate a robust list of organizations and people to survey.
There is no formula for how many surveys to complete. You want to gain an understanding of your community’s overall opinion.(See:Develop goals and a timeline.)
Make sure you give thecorrect survey. One community thought someone fit into one category, butthey ended up in another.
Be careful not to emphasize any one sector, because itwould bias how your community selects priorities.

Create a survey team

Approaches to forming a survey team vary greatly.

Have a balance of people who are caregivers and professionals.
Bring diversity to the table and onto the survey team to reflect the full community and prevent a lopsided or distorted picture.
Have people on your survey team who are connected in the community.It’s easier to survey someone you know.
Surveyors don’t have to come from your Action Team. Consider:
Volunteers, such as senior groups from the local senior center
Paid professionals who market or meet people as part of their paid job
Students currently enrolled in a medical field at the local college. They may be more successful at obtaining face-to-face interviews with medical personnel.
People recruited for surveying might stayed engaged after the surveys are done.

Use the full Action Team for preparing and executing the survey process.
“Our Action Team was more than willing to help create the interview list, and it just flowed into doing the surveying from there. Overall I think that kept people involved and kept the momentum going.”
Not everyone on the Action Team will be interested in this phase. If their participation falls off during this phase, stay in touch. They often reactivate with the action phase.
Recruit additional people to help as you move through the surveys.People you interview can become surveyors.

Train on conducting surveys

Train a number of people to share the assessment work. Surveying is time consuming and there's a risk of volunteer burnout.
Inform the group that assessment is part of the community engagement process. People who are used to research projects need to understand that the approach is focused on engagement, not scientific rigor.
Remind people that the assessment process raises awareness within the community; it builds momentum for what comes next.
Hold a short training session for the interviewers. Walk through the assessments and see if team members want to role play to practice asking the survey questions. Once people become familiar with the questions, subsequent surveys are easier to do.
Let team members know that it’s okay to not know the answer to a question asked during the survey. Take down the question and bring it back to the team or to your ACT support people. Engaging others is a key part of the survey process.

Learn interview strategies

The survey interviews takefrom 15 minutes to more than 2 hours to complete; 40 to 60 minutes is the norm. In instances where thesurveyor has been a caregiver, the interviews can last longer and get more information.
People who have never done a survey are more comfortable being paired with someone experienced.
People can do surveys as teams.
Communities who had two people interview one person obtained more relevant information and had richer discussions. One person was the interviewer and the other was the scribe.Both could be active participants.
A single surveyor noted, “It was very difficult to interview and write answers at the same time.”

Use the philosophy “Anything you can do to help is ok...you don’t have to do more surveys than you can handle.”
Assign the first round of surveys based on members choosing interviewees from a comprehensive list. Have team members survey people they know.
Get people who either work in a sector or care about that sector to do those interviews.
“We had a good response from physicians when the head physician did the interview via Survey Monkey.”
“Our health care system coordinated the completion of quite a few surveys (29 or so) using the electronic option.”
Once people complete their first surveys, they get comfortable with the process and can stretch themselves to interview people they don’t know.
Get the team thinking from the beginning -- Whowilltheysurvey? How? When?

Keep up the momentum
Feed back some of thenarrative comments; “hear” the voice of the caregiver.
Check and share progress. Recognizethe sectors doing great and keep cheerleading about this important work and being in it together.
Ask for a little more help where needed; e.g., “who do we know in the legal/financial area?”and “who can do one or two there?”
Have the group digest what is coming in as part of the assessment. This might encourage them to go back out and get additional insights/survey participants if there are holes or some sectors are lacking.
HAVE FUN. This is an opportunity to really get to know your community residents, along with services offered and resources available. It’s a time to learn and network.
Celebrate the stories of engagement during the survey process – this creates great energy for the team.
Provide leave-behind material for the interviewee as an educational opportunity and to help underscore the importance of this issue.
One team gave gift cards to people who got five surveys in by x date.

What not to do:

Do not change survey questions.One head physician and team lead changed the questions or did not ask all of the questions, so the information did not plot well on the analysis tool.

Do not do group surveys.Group interviews were tested to reach people who may not have had the time to participate otherwise.
Group interviewsdo not provide much rich feedback or stories. The interviewer isn’t able to develop as much of a relationship. 1:1 interviews/assessments are preferred.
One team tried to do a group survey at the chamber of commerce, but few people turned in the forms.