Survey Analysis Services

Consistent with our mission of providing organizations with the tools to build communities where all children and youth feel safe, connected and empowered, Community Matters’ School Climate Surveys (with Administration Instructions) can be downloaded and administered free of charge.

To support schools and districts with analyzing survey data and making sense out of the numbers, Community Matters (CM) has partnered with Transforming Local Communities, Inc. (TLC), a research and consulting firm specializing in the evaluation of public and private service projects. CM and TLC offer a package of:

Two Surveys…

1) School Climate Survey – this instrument helps shed light on how students feel at school, and on the nature and frequency of various types of mistreatment. So it can reveal an accurate picture, it is given to relatively large number of students, either:

• all the students in your school (for schools of UP TO 500, students, 4 th grade and above), or
• a representative sample of your school population (for schools of MORE THAN 500 students, 4 th grade and above).

In the latter case, TLC requires that you work directly with their staff on the sampling design in order to ensure that a representative sample of students and/or classrooms is selected.

2) Safe School Ambassador Survey – this instrument focuses on the attitudes, beliefs, skills and behaviors of a select group of students: those who become Safe School Ambassadors.

… Given Twice

1) The first time a survey is given, it “takes a snapshot” of conditions at that time and establishes a benchmark. Since it is often given before an intervention of some kind, it is called a “pretest.”

2) The same survey is usually given a second time, typically 6-12 months after the intervention (and the first survey), so it is often called the “posttest.”. By taking a second snapshot of conditions, it becomes possible to compare the two snapshots; after isolating other possible causes of any changes seen, it is possible to see what effect the intervention had.

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REMEMBER: if your school has more than 500 students AND you want to have TLC analyze your data, you MUST have your sampling plan approved by TLC BEFORE you give out the surveys. This will ensure that you obtain data that will answer the questions you are trying to answer.

Results You’ll Receive

After your completed posttest surveys are submitted to TLC, you’ll receive a customized report of findings – about 25 pages for an elementary school and about 35 pages for a middle school or high school – showing how your school climate has changed between the pretest and posttest survey administrations. Unlike the California Healthy Kids Survey reports, which are NOT customized and simply provide general information about survey questions and the raw data (in table format), TLC will write an actual report that is specific to your school and provides a complete interpretation of findings.

School climate survey results will be presented in comparative “group” scores; in other words, changes in particular individual students will not be shown because we don’t match each posttest survey with the pretest survey completed by the same person. This is because we are measuring group perception of climate, rather than individual behavior, attitudes or beliefs. However, the Ambassador surveys would be matched and additional analyses conducted if we have a minimum of 25 pretest/posttest survey sets.

If you are using the Climate Survey to shed light on a problem and galvanize support for solving it, you may want to have TLC prepare a narrative report (with data tables) of the pretest survey results. This “baseline” report can be provided for a small additional charge.

Pricing:

NOTES:

1) Pretest survey results (report and data tables) are an ADDITIONAL $350 per site.

2) Special pricing is available for single-school and low-population districts, and for districts surveying five or more schools simultaneously.

Next Steps:

 • If you have further questions or need more information about the survey process, please contact Community Matters.

• If you are interested in contracting with TLC for tabulation and analysis of your surveys, please contact Community Matters, and we will connect you with TLC directly. After that, you would:

1. contract with TLC
2. have your sampling plan approved by TLC
3. administer your pretest School Climate Surveys
4. send completed surveys to TLC
5. receive your baseline Survey Report (if requested; $350 additional)

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If you choose to launch the Safe School Ambassadors program, you would:

1. recruit and select your Ambassadors
2. administer your pretest Ambassador Surveys
3. send completed surveys to TLC

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When it’s time to assess the impact of your intervention (usually 6-12 months later), you would:

1. administer your posttest School Climate Surveys
2. administer your posttest Ambassador Surveys (if you launched the SSA program)
3. send all completed surveys to TLC
4. receive your full report (analysis and data) from TLC

TLC will make reports available to the district within four to six weeks of receiving the surveys. We strongly encourage districts to ship surveys via UPS, FedEx, or other carriers that provide tracking.