| March 2009 | Vol. 14 Issue 1 |
Last issue, we tackled the issue of fishing for feedback by discussing some helpful tips on how to collect feedback, define goals, and keep your audience in mind.
This story focuses what to do with the feedback now that you’ve collected it.
What you do can vary depending on how you collected feedback. Probably, the most common feedback collection method is a survey or ballots. A ballot is usually in the form of a postcard that has a small set of questions that individuals answer and put in a ballot box. Surveys tend to be longer and consist of more in-depth questions.
Now that you have a box full of ballots, you need to take the next step and organize the feedback so you can evaluate, read, and use it. There are numerous software programs that can help you analyze and organize survey or ballot responses but you can also use Excel to set-up a spreadsheet.
Assign numbers to responses or you might have used numbers as way for the audience to rate or respond to questions. It’s relatively easy to set-up the spreadsheet, type in the questions, and enter each response. Then, total each column and average them. You can also do this by hand depending on the number of surveys or ballots you have. However, you do need to structure your questions in a way that lends them to numerical rating. If your questions cannot be evaluated based on a scale, then asking open-ended questions might be the best way to collect feedback.
Even if you are using a spreadsheet, it is still important to note and record comments or other helpful pieces of information from the ballots or surveys.
If you don’t want to mess with a spreadsheet, a good, concise, well-organized report will to the trick. A good report will provide clear conclusions or a summary of the feedback. Even if the report is a set of bulleted comments that came from the survey, this will give others a chance to read and evaluate the feedback. A few other helpful tips when putting together a report about feedback:
- Express positive points
- Be optimistic about how the feedback can be used
- Make sure to include all viewpoints
- Try to tease out useful pieces of feedback
- Rethink your goals if the feedback is not clear
- Look for other helpful resources (books, seminars, etc.) to learn more about collecting feedback
Sometimes, handling feedback can be awkward. There may be times when you get feedback that is upsetting or isn’t what you were hoping or wanting to hear or learn. It is very important not to mishandle feedback. Changing responses or altering the surveys or the report is unethical. Even “unwanted” feedback is good!
Critical feedback can help bring about change. It can help you identify where you need to improve or operate better. When you alter or ignore feedback, it not only defeats the purpose of even collecting the information, it also shows your unwillingness to make improvements. Even if you feel you were unfairly criticized, it’s important to look critically at your initial goals and at the issue you’re evaluating.
Hooking feedback can be easy, but hooking good feedback takes some time, thought, and organization. Then, analyzing the feedback in way that can be used and shared with others has its own set of challenges. But if you work to properly record and report the feedback, it can be used to make great changes and improvements.
Now you have your bait (your goals), tackle and fishing pole (survey or ballot), you are ready to cast your fishing line and go fishing for good feedback. Hopefully the fish (audience) are biting.
Natalie Federer, neferer@purdue.edu
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