Baseline Survey: Who, What, Why, When, How
The steps that go into creating an effective baseline survey require some legwork, essential to developing useful information that leads to greater success and understanding, in the long run, of the subject being studied.
So let’s start from the beginning. What is a baseline survey? Simply put, it measures key conditions (indicators) before a project begins against which change and progress can be assessed. A baseline survey is the instrument that is used to record these measurements.
Why are these measurements important? Because it’s very difficult to plan, monitor, and evaluate your performance without baseline data. It helps organizations set achievable and realistic targets for their results, since baseline data provides a clear starting point to benchmark progress against. Without something to measure new results against, it is difficult to assess results as positive, negative or otherwise.
In order to create a usable and substantive baseline survey, here is a helpful “to-do” list that can help develop a great baseline survey.
