Data from Stakeholder Perspectives

The information you gather from stakeholders will be useful only when you put it into a format that allows you to analyze it. Looking at the information as a whole will allow you to see trends for all stakeholder groups and compare perspectives of different groups. For example, you may learn that there are significant discrepancies between the perceptions of stakeholder groups, such as the board of directors and the staff.

Here are some other tips that you may find useful when compiling the information you have gathered:

• Use different spreadsheets for quantitative information and qualitative information.
• Assign a number to each person who responded to a survey or interview and associate all answers from that respondent with their assigned number. Also be sure to record the assigned number on the individual surveys or the interview write-up form so that you can go back to the answers from a particular respondent if you need any clarifying information later.
• For individual respondents, be sure to include personal information on each, such as what group(s) they belong to (e.g., former board member, donor, etc.) and anything else you may have decided to collect on respondents (e.g., their race or ethnicity). Do not include names. Use consistent language for personal information. For example, do not say "donor" for one respondent and "contributor" for another respondent.
• Use the same format or the same questions for surveys and interviews if you collected similar information from different groups, such as volunteers and staff.

Review Sample Survey of Stakeholder Perspectives. (This information-gathering tool includes a short selection of questions. For more questions, refer to Reviewing Information-Gathering Topics.)

 Review Sample Stakeholder Perspectives: Likert Scale Responses (Quantitative) and Sample Stakeholder Perspectives: Narrative Responses (Qualitative).

Complete Stakeholder Perspectives: Compiling Likert Scale Responses (Quantitative) and Stakeholder Perspectives: Compiling Narrative Data (Qualitative).

Overview: Compiling the Information

Data from Available Facts

Data from Focus Group Responses