Limitations and Lessons learned

By being available only in English, this survey was targeted primarily at the English world. Though many development professionals worldwide do speak and understand English, a significant number do not. It should have been made available in at least three languages (English, French and Spanish), or at the very least, participants should have been able to answer in their language of choice. Some did, but most did not. It was evident from some of the responses that the respondent struggled with English. Perhaps if he/she were writing in his/her own language, they could have better expressed themselves, thereby enriching the survey result.

There was a higher-than-anticipated drop-out rate, as shown in Figure 7. While 154 persons responded to the survey, three disagreed with the terms, bringing the total down to 151. However, 34 people opted to exit from the survey at the first question (contact information), bringing the survey sample down to 120. At the fourth question, which asked for preferred terminology, an additional five exited. When they were asked to estimate available resources for development communication, another 20 had fled. By the time they got down to the 11 th question, another 4 had dropped out. During the questioning over the eight goals, only 77 respondents remained with the survey.

Figure 7: Point in the survey at which some participants withdrew

Of the group that made it to the 11 th question, 33 were with various UN organizations, 17 were professors, 16 were consultants, eight were “other”, three were with bilateral aid organizations, and two were with other multilaterals. Comparing this to the 128 who made it to the second question (asking for organizational affiliation), 28% of the UN people had dropped out (from 46 to 33); 50% of other multilateral (from 4 to 2); 25% of the bilaterals (from 4 to 3); 22% of the NGO/CBO representatives (from 18 to 14); 6% of professors (from 18 to 17), all two of the students; 41% of consultants (from 27 to 16) and 11% of the others group (from 9 to 8). Thus the group that dropped out the least were professors from academia.

Of the three groups that were originally approached to participate in the survey, (UN Roundtable on Development for Communication, the UN Communications Group and the World Bank/DFID e-forum on measuring the impact of devcom), the highest dropout rate was among members of the UN Communications Group (61%). This is not surprising, since of the two groups that were individually invited to participate, this was also the group that had the lowest response rate (23% -- while the UN Roundtable had a 52% response rate). This is indeed disappointing, since the UN Communications Group is also the one that could perhaps provide the most insight about the use of communications in the UN's work.

As a result of the declining population of survey respondents, in analyzing the data, only the sub-population of the original 151 could be considered in each question category. This group was self-selected and obviously biased in favour of development communications.

Better wording and order of questions

In retrospect, the questions could have been better formulated, and sequenced. To begin with, this researcher should have pushed those exiting the survey early to a page with a question as to why he/she was leaving (i.e.: 1) Too busy? 2) Irrelevant? 3) Do not like the way the survey is constructed?)

After asking for the preferred definition, for example, this researcher could have asked participants to choose between communication as 1) diffusion, 2) participation or 3) both.

The question asking if an organization had committed resources to devcom should have been mandatory, and the question “not applicable” should have been added.