Use this survey to assess the economic impact of COVID-19 in your community
The COVID-19 Economic & Employment Impact Survey is free for a limited time as part of our Monthly Module series. Questions have been created by National Research Center experts to help you assess community opinions and understand the needs and behaviors of your residents. While you can tailor the questions to fit your community, we recommend keeping the wording unchanged as much as possible.
This survey, like the surveys in Polco’s COVID-19 Toolkit, gives residents a way to make their voices heard and allows local governments to get the input they need to make decisions. In a socially distanced world, creative digital approaches to community engagement are more important than ever before.
The topics covered in the COVID-19 Economic & Employment Survey include:
- Overall economic health
- Quality & variety of employment opportunities
- Availability of jobs that pay a livable wage
- Cost of living
- Impact of COVID-19 on household income
- Financial issues as a result of COVID-19
- Job loss
- Increased expenses related to child care, technology, and healthcare
- Difficulty paying for rent, utilities, healthcare, food, transportation, etc.
- Job searching
- Job training & skills
- Hiring and employment needs
- Demographic information
To use this survey in your community, find the COVID-19 Economic & Employment Survey in the Polco Library here.
Accessing the survey
If you do not already have a Polco profile for your community, you may sign up for one here. Once signed in:
- Visit the Content section and look for the Recommended Content on the right.
- Choose the COVID-19 Economic & Employment Survey and click Add as Draft (you can edit drafts before you publish the survey).
- The survey is now ready to publish. Click on the survey in the list, make any additional edits you'd like, and click Publish at the bottom.
This survey does not require customizations before you publish it, but you can choose to replace the generic “your community” and “your local government” with something more specific, like your City or County’s name.
Note: Ensure your profile is active by including an image or logo of your organization and a short description before publishing the survey. At any point, if you have questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to our team using the chat form in the bottom right. We usually respond within 1-2 minutes.
Conditional Logic
This survey contains conditional logic, also known as “skip logic.” This means that respondents will not see questions that do not apply to them. Editing the survey will not affect the conditional logic within the survey. Learn more about conditional logic here.
Messaging for Community Surveys
The best way to promote your survey is the use of any existing social media outlets in use for your community. You want to let your community know why you are asking these questions, and what you will do with the information. Suggested messages for a website or social media:
- {Community name} is asking our residents to tell us your thoughts on COVID-19 economic & employment impacts - Please complete this quick survey {add survey URL}.
- After you complete this quick survey {add survey URL}, please share our Facebook and Twitter messages with other community members, to ensure participation by a wide variety of residents. Be sure the voice of the community is heard.
More suggested social media posts can be found here.
In addition to utilizing social media platforms and the community website, you may want to promote in more traditional modes, like flyers and newsletters. Suggested messaging for flyers and community newsletters include:
{Community name} is asking our residents to tell us your thoughts on COVID-19’s economic impact within our community - be heard!
Join your neighbors on polco.us/[shorturl] to provide input. More information at [short link to city blog].
More suggested outreach language can be found here.
Remember to engage partners in your community to help get the invitation to as diverse a group of residents as possible!
Walkthrough Video
(Optional) Allowing guest responses
Continued engagement is best encouraged by requiring registration as it allows you to recontact respondents. However, for surveys like this with more sensitive questions, you may not want to require registration (allowing for full anonymity instead of confidentiality).
The default on Polco is to require registration. To turn that requirement off, you need our Guest Response feature. Normally there is a nominal charge for this feature, however, for this particular survey, please contact success@polco.us and we will enable the guest response feature at no cost. (Note: After we have activated guest responses on your profile you will need to select it for your survey at the bottom of the "Create Survey" page.)
