need feedback on community survey questions please?

When I wrote our survey, I asked questions from the first person perspective:

"I think that the HOA rules and regulations are adequately enforced. (Examples: garbage cans put away, front lawns weed free, house paint fresh, and the like". I felt that asking questions from the first person perspective would get better results.

I did not ask about dues because I believe no one believes dues are a good value.

We did have free form boxes for people to submit comments. Found a number of comments were about non-HOA related things.

Overall we are seeing positive feedback from homeowners from the survey.

A few observations:

As much as possible, make your questions, yes/no, multiple choice (no more than 4) or a 1-5 scale. The quicker people get through the survey, the more responses you can accumulate.

I don’t know if you plan to use SurveyMonkey or a similar program for the online questions, but I know they offer suggestions on questions you could use – you can check those out. The CAI website has done a few articles on homeowner surveys and has similar questions. In fact, you might Google “HOA satisfaction survey” or similar – you may find surveys conducted by other communities and there may be some questions you can adapt.

Drop the question requesting identifying information like emails – if someone makes a comment a board member reads and doesn’t like, the board member will know who said it and that could cause drama)

You may want to do a separate mailing or post something on your website asking people to contact your property manager or a designated board member if there have been changes to his/her information. That’s where you can add the information about accepting paperless bills and mailings (do read your documents first to ensure this is ok!)

I understand why you’d like demographic information like age or gender, but questions on race/nationality and gender are irrelevant. It may be helpful to ask about age so you’ll know if you have an increasing number of older residents who may need certain considerations, such as more sidewalks with cut-outs at the corners (easier for wheelchairs and walkers to navigate) or you have an increasing number of children and youth and there might be a demand for a small playground. Instead of specific ages, the question could be something like:

What age group are you in – under 18, 18-30, 31-54, 55+

Add a few questions about the property manager’s and board’s performance – those could be rated on a 1-5 scale such as “the property manager returns phone calls or answers emails in a timely manner” or “the board is transparent on its decisions”

For rules enforcement, you may want to ask which rules should be more or less enforced, such as parking, noise, trash, etc.

Skip the question on the HOA playing a bigger role n the community – it’s not necessarily a bad question, but might be better suited to place in your question “please let us know any suggestions or comments on how the HOA can make X community a better place to live”

The answer to any of the “should the HOA spend money on” questions is surely dependent on how much money! Why not just ask them to prioritize the following from 1-X.

And I wouldn’t ask if Assessments are a good value - they aren’t supposed to be “value”. The assessment is each owners share of the maintenance responsibility of the association. It’s not a country club.

Asking about age, gender and race is just begging for trouble.