Awareness, Perception and Attitude Tracking
Background
Most organisations undertake some form of long term planning, but measuring its effectiveness is somewhat more elusive. As an integral part of their 5 year plan Friends of the Earth committed to measuring the effectiveness of their plan through a comprehensive research programme. Caroline Midmore and Associates commissioned NEMS to conduct the research for the programme.
Methodology
The complexity of the overall requirements necessitated a multi-stranded approach. This included telephone surveys of representative samples of the public and both telephone and self-completion surveys of various supporter groups. By using various permutations each year, trends throughout the plan timescales were measured.
Results
At the core of the plan was the long term shifting of awareness, perceptions and attitude towards both the organisation and its environmental agenda.
In order to better understand the general public a new classification method based on level of 'greenness' was developed at the outset. This completed a spectrum of groups, through various supporter groups and the wider public, enabling the comparison of shifts between all the various groups to be examined and compared.
Benefits
As with all plans different components differed in their effectiveness. The ongoing feedback from the research programme informed the operational implementation of the plan as well as a quantitative measure of its overall effectiveness in delivering on the objectives set out.