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As a part of your data collection strategy, you should set some expectations about your data collection timeline. Data collection should ideally be completed in less than one month. In other words, while initially developing your research instruments may take some time, you should keep the data collection relatively brief. Once the first survey is out the door, the first focus group invitation is sent or the first interview is held, your team should end data collection one month later and begin compiling and analyzing the data on hand. This will help you stay on track and keep momentum.

Interviews and focus groups 

These are easier to control for time, as they are arranged by your core team and conducted on your schedule (but see Section 4.4 for information on scheduling and other ways to accommodate participant needs). If you will use interviews or focus groups as a data collection method, you should prioritize them and complete them in a condensed period. 

FGDs typically last about 60 to 90 minutes, involving around 8–10 people in the group. Individual interviews may take less time for each interview, but overall timelines will depend on the number of interviews you will schedule and your available human resources. By dividing efforts between your team members, you should be able to arrange and conduct many of the interviews and/or FGDs in the same week. As noted in Annex VII and Annex VIII, significant time will be required for transcribing the spoken interviews or conversations, as the quality of these notes will be crucial for analysis.

Surveys

For surveys, your method of distributing and collecting the survey questionnaire and your sample size will affect how quickly results are collected, as different approaches, such as door-to-door canvassing with printed paper surveys, online surveys and mailed surveys, require varying timelines. You should set a reasonable time frame for surveys to be completed by residents and returned to (or collected by) the core team or its partners – at least one and up to two weeks is a good benchmark.

Why limit survey collection timelines? You want to make sure that your data collection is a snapshot of opinions at a given time and that as few external variables may influence responses as possible. The longer that surveys are out among the public, the greater the chance that an external event will affect responses; for example, if a sudden natural disaster (fire or flood) damages many local homes, that will immediately reset the community’s priorities to emergency relief and constructing new homes. 

Also, you want the data. While survey data collection – especially door-to-door canvassing – can be a rewarding way to engage with community members and an important moment for your team and local leaders to demonstrate commitment to residents, you need to listen to and analyze the data before acting on resident priorities. The longer you wait, the more you risk losing momentum, and the public may even feel that you have failed to follow through.

Door-to-door canvassing: 

The size of your community will contribute to determining your overall sample size and how you determine your sample composition. This will, in turn, impact timelines.

Small sample sizes (less than 200 households, with fewer than 30 to 40 total households assigned to each canvassing team member or pair of enumerators) will more easily allow team members to return in person after a short period (such as one week in Moldova) to collect the completed survey questionnaires. This step of returning in person also increases response rates, and once sufficient surveys are collected, analysis can begin. 

When it comes to higher sample sizes (more than 200 households or more than 50 doors per canvassing team), distributing surveys may take several days. This makes it difficult to conduct a second round of canvassing to collect surveys within a week or two. 

Box 15. Learn from experience – Collecting surveys in Slovakia

Feedback teams composed of local officials in Vráble and Šurany, Slovakia, distributed hundreds of surveys to residents through a door-to-door canvassing approach but faced challenges collecting them. At first, officials aimed to copy the Moldova model and repeated their door-to-door canvassing to collect surveys, but (as it was the summertime or the middle of the workday) many residents were not home. Officials – struggling to find the time to continue recanvassing – decided they needed a different approach. The teams set up a drop box in the lobby of the city administration building (in a central location in town) and, through various communication channels (such as public meetings and the local newspaper), asked residents to return completed surveys by a certain date. The adaptation paid off, with nearly half of the surveys in Vráble returned via the drop box. 

This solution addressed the door-to-door collection challenge but posed new issues for their timeline – neither team gave residents a survey deadline. In both cases, neither team set nor held to an internal deadline for the end of data collection. This led both teams to spend months on data collection. Vráble residents responded to the surveys eventually; however, in Šurany, this loss of momentum weakened the process, which was ultimately sidelined as local debate over a large industrial development consumed officials’ attention. 

Later, reflecting on the experience, officials still believed the face-to-face engagement from the first round of canvassing (to distribute surveys) was important and worth the time invested. However, in the future, when collecting the surveys, the officials planned to introduce the drop box from the start of the process and would also consider introducing other options for returning the surveys (mailing or online, for example). 

Box 16. Learn from experience – Collecting surveys in Moldova 

In Moldova, door-to-door canvassing efforts involved one-week turnaround times. One week after the survey questionnaires were distributed, the team returned to collect the survey in person. Note that not all surveys need to be distributed in a single day (this distribution and collection timeline can be staggered). This worked for many teams because their communities are small: teams only aimed to collect approximately 100 surveys. Teams also split the work effectively (one team member was assigned to 25 doors, for example). In addition, when designing the survey, teams in Moldovan municipalities wanted to ensure the questionnaire was easy to understand and complete. They designed surveys to be short and simple, emphasizing face-to-face engagement during questionnaire distribution so that enumerators could explain the purpose of the questionnaire and how to complete it to residents they spoke with. While the teams endeavored for residents to feel comfortable and answer the survey privately, residents were allowed to complete and return the survey on the spot. Physically returning to collect the survey within one week allowed the teams to keep the data collection timeline short, rather than wait for residents to return the survey in their own time. 

Box 17. Digital democracy – Using online tools in feedback loops

With the rise of the internet and smartphones and the increasing availability and penetration of digital technologies to communities around the world, democratic activists have sought to leverage online tools and platforms to boost public decision-making. This is called digital democracy – using digital tools to help people actively engage in governance through voting or participatory platforms.

Activists highlight the advantages of speed and inclusion that digital tools provide, making it easier to source, analyze and engage more voices in less time. The participatory democracy organization People Powered regularly publishes “Ratings of Digital Participation Tools,” which, as of 2024, includes 30 tools that support one or a variety of participatory processes.67 One of these tools is Pol.is, an open-source platform that aims to solicit input and build consensus around views. Pol.is has famously been used in Taiwan to support vTaiwan, a digital democracy tool that has had some success in supporting legislative developments in Taiwan. The platform helped legislators and stakeholders achieve consensus around online alcohol sales and disputes between Uber and taxi drivers.68 Join.gov.tw is another Taiwanese platform for online petitions where residents can suggest fixes for their local governments. These tools were a direct outcome of Taiwan’s politically active civic tech movement, notably represented by the community called g0v (gov zero). This group pushed for transparency and participation through policy changes, encouraging the uptake of online platforms for decision-making and by proactively publishing public-friendly data visualizations to encourage public response.69

Benefits and drawbacks from the Taiwan experience: Recommendations from vTaiwan and related tools are often nonbinding, meaning legislators can ignore them; a study of the project indicated that this weakened users’ impact on decisions and discouraged participation.70 In addition, the tools do not always easily connect with or suggest a clear government response. This can lead comments to pile up or discussions to fizzle out with no resolution. Some participants (and government representatives) find the tools too complicated to use; those without internet or computer access cannot use them. Others argue that offline, face-to-face meetings are too important for trust, community-building and constructive dialogue to be replaced by digital tools.

Despite this mixed record and debate, digital democracy remains an important part of the discussion around open and inclusive democratic practice. Activists continue to see it as an important tool for sourcing ideas and lowering barriers to entry for youth and others in political discussion. The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) also poses powerful risks and opportunities for the ability of online tools to sort and analyze irregular and massed inputs from large populations. The impact of AI on democracy and the world in general remains to be seen.

For more information and examples, see: 

  • National Democratic Institute, Municipal Digital Transformation Guidebook: A guide for municipal leaders with the drive to embark on digital transformation programs – Link. This guide, developed by NDI’s Democratic Technology team, is focused on municipal leaders and officials working to implement digital innovation initiatives in their governments and communities. The guide offers case studies and advice for the kinds of initiatives that can be undertaken, as well as their costs and international examples.
  • Public and Online Facilitation Resources for Collaboration – Link. This is an open-source list of facilitation resources, including basic collaborative brainstorming and whiteboard tools, online meeting platforms, online digital engagement tools and project management tools. For each tool, collaborators have added a description of its function, cost, web link, pros and cons of the tools, and whether it is integrated with other platforms.

Finally, consider exploring data collection tools available through the non-profit organization KoboToolbox. Kobo Toolbox helps organizations to conduct surveys, monitor and evaluate their projects, and generate evidence for their organizing activities. KoboToolbox is designed to work both online and offline, which makes it suitable for places with low internet or cellular network penetration. KoboToolbox also supports data security, quality, analysis and visualization features. KoboToolbox is an open-source and free software that can be customized and adapted to different contexts and needs.

Box 18. Did you know? A connection between homeownership and civic engagement

Research by Habitat for Humanity found that people who stayed in their homes or residences for longer periods of time - those with higher ‘residential stability’ - also scored higher on measures of social and civic engagement. 

The researchers theorize that because homeowners in affordable housing stayed in their residences far longer than homeowners in poverty or renters, those individuals had more opportunities to build social capital and felt more motivated to invest in and improve their communities; for example, they were more likely to participate in local elections and join community groups. Overall, high residential stability “related to improved life satisfaction, increased civic participation and improved educational outcomes for children, along with better physical and mental health.”71

What does this mean for feedback loops? Consider the residential stability of the average resident in your community - perhaps you have census data to determine the percent who rent rather than own their homes, or how many residents or families have moved in or out. They may also tend to be younger; in the U.S., people under age 35 are much more likely to change their residence compared to older generations. 

According to the research, these individuals are less likely to be civically engaged. Homeownership rates (the percent of homes occupied by the owner or mortgage-holder) in the US and EU are respectively 65% (2022)72 and 70% (2023)73, indicating roughly one in three residents rents their home (with this rate changing between individual states and countries). Note that homeowner statistics can be slightly misleading, as they count people still paying the mortgage or loan on their home; homeowners in the EU also may not own the land their home sits on.

When you design your public engagement, especially if it’s door to door, consider the neighborhoods and residences you plan to visit. Do young renters cluster in certain neighborhoods? Are you likely to encounter older residents or families in certain places? If you want to reach younger residents or reach residents you don’t customarily see at, it may be worthwhile to deliberately focus on rented flats and apartments in your community. 

End of step checklist: 

  • Review your country and local authority data governance framework in anticipation of collecting information from residents; prepare to store and manage this data.
  • Select your method or methods for collecting feedback from the public – interviews, focus groups and surveys – and develop your implementation plan with an eye toward inclusion and access considerations.
  • Implement your interviews, focus groups and surveys.
Footnotes

67Platform Ratings | Ratings for Digital Participation Tools (People Powered, n.d.), Link.

68Chris Horton, The Simple but Ingenious System Taiwan Uses to Crowdsource Its Laws (MIT Technology Review, 2018), Link.

69Ming-Sho Ho, Exploring Worldwide Democratic Innovations - A Case Study of Taiwan’s Civic Tech Movement (European Democracy Hub, 2022), Link.

70Nick Aspinwall, Taiwan Tried to Digitize Democracy. It Was a Huge Flop (The Daily Beast, 2023), Link. 

71Research Series: How Does Homeownership Contribute to Social and Civic Engagement? (Habitat for Humanity, n.d.), Link.  

72Robert R. Callis, Rate of Homeownership Higher than before Pandemic in All Regions (United States Census Bureau, 2023), Link.

73Housing in Europe - House or Flat – Owning or Renting (Eurostat, n.d.), Link. 

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