Needs Survey
The Needs Survey is a collaborative data collection effort to better understand the service needs of low-income families in Waterloo Region.
Launched by the Side-by-Side Collaborative, it aims to understand:
- The demographic breakdown of families accessing supportive services.
- What families report as priority areas where they need support.
- What services families prioritize and how readily they can access those services.
- What specific barriers prevent families from accessing services.
Our goal is to collaboratively collect data on the current needs of low-income families in Waterloo Region by partnering with social service organizations serving low-income families. We are inviting you to be part of that data collection. The data collected will show you the demographics, service needs and obstacles of families accessing your organization. Additionally, by pooling our data, we can ensure it more accurately represents the needs and experiences of low-income families in our region. It will also provide insight on who your organization currently has trouble reaching and why.
The benefits to your organization:
- Free access to our validated and ethics cleared survey tool.
- Free access to a dashboard that allows you to see the data specific to your organization and the collective dataset from all participating organizations.
- Use of the data to advocate for the needs of families, inform programming decisions and help you identify service barriers.
What you need to do if you participate:
- Look after administering a digital survey at your organization (with survey links and materials provided by us).
- Provide all survey respondents at your organization with a $10 gift card in appreciation of the time they spend filling out the survey.
- Be comfortable with the data you collect being pooled with the data collected by other organizations.
How you can utilize the dashboard:
- Get estimates on the number of low-income families experiencing different obstacles (e.g. Housing, food insecurity, mental health etc.) in our region.
- Explore the service and support preferences of families accessing your program(s).
- Identify what barriers are preventing families from accessing your services.
The Needs Survey has received ethics clearance and will be translated into multiple languages.
In May 2025, we plan to launch a second round of data collection across multiple agencies. We have already collected pilot data in October 2024.
If you are interested in the preliminary insights from this data, touring a prototype dashboard, or if you are interested in participating in upcoming data collection, view the recording of our info session and/or sign up for our mailing list!