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Understanding the people within your organisation is vital to developing a safe, welcoming, and positive environment.

Everyone has their own unique set of experiences, motivations, barriers and needs when participating or volunteering within sport and physical activity.

Taking the time to understand and respond to these can help you deliver a better experience for everyone in your organisation. It can also help you check and challenge your culture, and improve your communications and decision-making.

Sound good? Read on to find out more about how to get to the heart of what your people are thinking.

What is Your Views?

'Your Views' is a question bank designed to help you, your committee, board or leadership team. 

You can use the questions with your participants, volunteers or employees to get a 360-degree view of how your organisation’s doing and any areas you could improve on in the future to give people a better experience. The questions explore people’s views on:

  • their motivations
  • their overall experience
  • their satisfaction with the activities offered, or their role 
  • what would encourage more people to volunteer 
  • how your organisation is run 
  • your communication efforts 
  • your social activities, and 
  • the facilities you use.

How to use Your Views

The questions and answers provided are free for you to use, amend or add to. Just download the document provided and pick and choose what’s most helpful. Each section focuses on a specific topic and you can use some or all of them, it’s up to you!

Some of the questions invite free text (open) answers, and others ask respondents to pick from a five-point scale of 'very likely' to 'unlikely'. Depending on your audience, you could swap these for emojis to make the survey more engaging.

Once you’re clear on the questions you want to use, there are lots of different ways you can go about asking them, including: 

Surveys
These can be a great way of collecting open and honest views, as they enable respondents to remain anonymous. There are lots of online platforms that can be helpful so have a look and see what suits you best. Some people might prefer paper copies of surveys or need help completing surveys online. Please be mindful of your environmental impact and avoid printing as far as possible.
Feedback forms
If you don’t want to do a full-scale survey, feedback forms can be an effective way of collecting insight on a smaller number of questions. We encourage you to do this online or via email to avoid environmental impacts of using paper copies.
Focus groups
These are a good way of bringing representatives from different groups together and to discuss key questions. Focus groups can be a quick and efficient way of collecting people’s views but might mean you can’t gather everyone’s opinions.
Conversations
If you’d prefer to keep things informal, you can use our questions to help you explore people’s views in everyday discussions.

Things to consider before using Your Views

  • Consent

    Before gathering information, it’s important to consider who’ll be responding. 

    If you want to ask questions to under-18s or those with additional needs, be sure to check if you need to ask their parents, guardians or carers to help or give their consent.

    You should also get your respondents’ consent if you’re planning to share your findings with people inside and outside of your organisation. 

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  • Time

    Consider how long it’ll take someone to input into your survey, feedback form or focus group sessions. 

    You’re likely to get a better response rate if the time commitment is reasonable and clear from the outset.

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  • Deadlines

    Before you start engaging people, agree a deadline for data collection and schedule a meeting to discuss the results.

    You can also use the meeting to plan how you’ll address and issues or opportunities for improvement.

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  • Anonymous or attributed

    Before you start, agree if you want the information you receive to be attributed to an individual or anonymous. 

    Being able to identify individual responses enables you to follow up answers, but can also mean respondents are less open with their responses.

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  • Recruitment

    Think about how you’ll distribute any surveys or feedback forms, or recruit people into focus groups. 

    Use as many channels as possible to ensure you reach every part of your organisation. 

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  • Frequency

    It’s good to ask people’s views on a regular basis. 

    Think about how often you want to do this, for example annually or every two years.

    You may want to use some of the same questions so you can compare responses year on year.

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  • Storing of data

    Ensure that the data and information you collect is stored safely and securely.

    If you’re collecting any personal data, ensure you understand and meet GDPR requirements.

    Yorkshire and Humber Learning Community have a helpful online module that you can access. 

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Responding to feedback

It’s important to review the responses you receive, explore what’s good about your organisation, what people enjoy, and what and how you can improve.

It can be helpful to develop an action plan or ‘you said, we did’ document that sets out what people said and what you plan to do in response.

This will show people that their views are important, that you’re listening, and reacting positively to feedback.