Families Commission: The Couch

The Couch is an online polling/questionnaire website set up by the Families Commission. According to the Commission's website, its role "is to promote the interests of all families and promote a better understanding of family issues and needs amongst government agencies and the wider community. To do this, we need to understand the issues affecting families. We listen to families, and organisations involved with them, to hear their views".

The purpose of The Couch is to feed into the Commission's work of listening to families. It does this by conducting regular online polls and surveys. According to its website, "the responses from our polls and questionnaires will help us in our advocacy work to improve services and support for families, and improve our advice on proposed government policies". Since its launch in April 2006, The Couch has signed up more than 3000 individual members.

Section Thirteen of the Families Commission Act 2003 states that the Families Commission must create mechanisms to ensure it can gather the views of its stakeholders, such as Māori, Pasifika, and other ethnic and cultural groups in a variety of family configurations. The Couch is a response to this requirement, but it also positions the Families Commission as an innovative organisation, and helps it to be seen as innovative by government agencies and its constituents.

Even though it is a website, The Couch is primarily seen as belonging in a ‘community engagement’ rather than a 'technical design' discourse. Approaches such as user-centred design are considered important, but the priority is to put people first, not the technology. Those behind its design and operation strive to enact principles of respect, reciprocity and trust by engaging people online through The Couch. The Families Commission itself has strong principles of community engagement. It is also influenced by the community engagement principles of overseas jurisdictions like the Government of Queensland, Australia.

The Couch is modelled on online citizens panels from the United Kingdom and on the Government of Queensland's edemocracy approach.

The Couch went through a natural evolution in its first year. By running different types of polls and on different topics, a clear idea of what works and what doesn't is being established. The connection between polls and the Commission's policy work is important, and something that is considered when every poll is conducted.

The Couch connection with policy depends on the needs of the various Families Commission projects. For instance, it is used to:

• inform parliamentary and other submissions
• inform public statements by commissioners
• supplement policy research
• help identify trends and themes for further research
• collect narrative statements available for public education
• create community among the Couch membership, the Families Commission's constituency, by informing members of each others’ experiences. This is a kind of validation exercise that helps people relate to one another.

The structure of The Couch is built around polls. They have evolved from a basic distinction between short, topical polls and longer research based questionnaires, to a more refined set of distinctions.

• Quick Polls are a maximum of five questions and help position the Commission for parliamentary select committee submissions or public statements.
• Exploratory Polls aim to find out members' priorities.
• Research Polls supplement the research work of Family Commission staff on issues like perceptions of out of school childcare.

In its first year, the Commission conducted seven 'polls' and two 'questionnaires'. Since its launch on 11 April 2006, The Couch has had a direct impact on the work of the Families Commission. The Couch website states:

"Members' responses have been generous and have provided us with a wealth of experience and views which are proving very useful for the Families Commission's work. One highlight has been the use of Couch members' opinions in our report When School's Out: Conversations with parents, carers and children about out of school services. Another milestone in Couch activities will be the inclusion of responses from our Families and Alcohol Poll in a Families Commission submission on the Government review of restrictions on the sale of alcohol to young people."

In terms of process for setting up polls, all parts of the Commission are involved. The policy and research team has subject area and question design expertise. The Couch team is expert in the use of language and communication with members. Internal testing of questions is conducted to ensure their quality and clarity, and polls are signed off by the Families Commission board and its managers. The timeline from poll inception to release is about one month.

The Couch project manager sees this role as being a voice for the needs of Couch members. He has found there is not always a good match between the way researchers want to use the Couch community and ensuring a good response from Couch members (e.g. long questionnaires, complex language, etc.). The team running The Couch sees itself as playing a guardian role to ensure Couch members are treated in accordance with sound community engagement principles.

Practically, this means being more rigorous about how the information will be used. This includes making a clear statement about how results will be put to work. An in-house editorial team is being set up to ensure polls on The Couch have clear objectives which match how the Commission will use the information for its various purposes.

Internal buy-in
The project manager says it is important to ensure decision makers on the Families Commission board and management team have a high level of confidence in how the website is being run. For each poll this involves providing a risk analysis, contextual information about the purpose of the poll and an outline of how information will be used. Recognition received by The Couch is also shared in an effort to build up a picture of the Couch’s value -- this is in addition to regular statistics. It's acknowledged that it's not just facts and figures that help keep decision makers supportive. Using novel online tools is relatively rare in New Zealand so understandably many decision makers are unfamiliar with the approach being taken. Working to win their confidence with good news stories is important for the Couch's success.

Building awareness
Marketing The Couch to its constituents -- both families and agencies -- is also important. The Couch has had a strong marketing focus, which its project manager believes has been a major contributor to the site’s strong membership numbers. The Couch team has been present at many community events around the country, and has engaged famillies through 'Fun Family Photos' -- families have their picture taken with a fun background and can download them from the Couch's website. The team also has 'goodies' to hand out so people can take away branded items like packets of jellybeans. Moreover, the Couch team has literally taken a red couch (the logo of the site) to various family events to attract interest and sign-ups.

The team also worked to engage other agencies that may have use for the Couch's findings. Presenting and sharing the results is seen as a valuable way of making sure data is used effectively. But it is not yet a systematic part of ongoing work. A data sharing policy between the Families Commission and other agencies was developed in 2007. As in any field, relationship management is incredibly important.

In 2006-2007, The Couch played a strong role in supporting a major consultation by the Families Commission on out of school services.

The term, "out of school services" (OSS), refers to before-school, after-school and school-holiday programmes for school-aged children (aged five to 13 years), where the care of a child has been formally handed over from a parent or caregiver to an OSS provider.

The Commission held 19 consultation meetings and used The Couch to run an online questionnaire. Overall, the consultation solicited 603 responses through the Couch questionnaire, and involved 350 adults and 190 children.

Reviewing the full final report and summary, it is clear The Couch played a key role in gathering evidence for the consultation. But the findings from The Couch are balanced with pre-existing research studies by the Families Commission research unit, the OECD, Department of Labour, Ministry of Social Development and others. The face-to-face workshops figure prominently as well. Together, these sources of data create an overall view of how parents and children view the opportunities and challenges concerning out of school services.

Alongside the research element of the consultation, The Couch and workshops captured people's first hand accounts of their ideas and experiences about out of school services. Put forward as quotations, this information plays an important role in making the subject matter and the nuance of the discussion more concrete for readers. Moreover, children's drawings of the sort of out of school services they would like to have are also included in the final report and summary. The communication value of this data should not be underestimated -- it helps to make the final report and summary more compelling.

The recommendations of the report are driven by what was heard in the overall consultation.

• Concerns about the expense of out of school services on the part of participants led to calls for government investment to reduce cost.
• Concerns about access to programmes on the part of participants led to calls to create more services, build awareness around existing services, and to tailor services so they are available at times and places that suit the needs of families.
• Concerns raised by participants about the quality of care led to calls to establish minimum standards for caregivers in out of school service programmes, and to ensure services are more than just 'babysitting' insofar as they offer children relaxing, stimulating, educational and recreational activities as they are wanted/needed.

In the May 2007 Budget the Government announced an additional $17.4 million had been allocated to improving the supply and quality of out of school services.

The Couch team is considering how to engage its membership in more discussion as members have taken a real sense of ownership of The Couch. People have used open-ended questions in the polls to share honestly and openly their ideas and experiences. Some people have written up to 600 or more words. The project manager talked about the unexpected ways people will find to get messages across about their ideas. Feedback has been received from members, including about holding the Commission to account for the way the website is run. Most of this information is unsolicited. He believes the way people are using the Couch is an indication that people would be willing to participate more interactively, including through discussion forums.

The team will consider a variety of models to open up discussion, one of which would be an expert-led 'deliberative discussion'. So, for instance, an expert could present a policy issue that the Commission is working on, and the various options and approaches that could be taken to address that issue. The expert would then facilitate discussion with people about their own stories and ideas about the topic. This could result in recommendations to the Families Commission to take to government, other agencies or the public. Or it could give the Commission valuable information about how the public will react to a proposed course of action.

Importantly, the Couch community has been evolving. Because they are becoming more familiar with issues as they do more polls, Couch members are increasingly seen as an expert resource. This raises interesting methodological questions about how to position the input of the Couch membership for policy making purposes. If the membership is 'expert', does this mean they will be biased in their responses? On the other hand, if they are considered 'representative', does this mean they are uninformed?

There are a few key things to note.

• Note how some new Families Commission business processes have been created to ensure the quality of the Couch inputs and outputs. The 'editorial board' is a manifestation of a different kind of project governance. A real challenge is engaging people across the organisation to generate ideas for new polls, so that The Couch can increase its value to the Families Commission.
• Note the risk management component -- risk assesment works its way through the organisation, up to the Families Commission board which signs off on final questions. Risk management is where senior managers are most likely to be concerned before the online engagement begins. Key questions for them are: "What value will this bring to our programmes?" and "Will engaging undermine our reputation or put current programmes at risk?"
• Note the need for marketing -- both to engage the membership and other agencies.
• Note the uncertainty around managing data -- both sharing it and ensuring its continued quality.
• Note the role of the project manager -- proactively building confidence upwards within the organisation while being the members' advocate within the organisation for the purpose of engaging members outside the organisation.
• Note the skill set of the team making The Couch work -- marketing, public relations, policy, community engagement, project management, survey design, Web design and IT. These skills combine to help drive the process at its various points. The right people are needed to ensure the feedback loop works well at all stages.
• Note that for the Families Commission consultation on out of school services, The Couch is part of a mixture of sources of information, including published research and face-to-face consultation workshops. Presenting relevant, reputable information is critical for the credibilty of the overall results.
• Note how results information includes visual elements (colour graphs and charts) as well as text, which works well for a Web interface.
• Note that in the out of school services report, it is ambiguous what happens next. The report would be improved with more tangible offerings, though the Families Commission may have unknown constraints.

• There seems to be an opportunity for standards in this emerging area, but they may not need to be reinvented. Social research quality standards should presumably apply, especially where online engagement is contributing to policy making. On the other hand, there may be special considerations for the online environment. As an emerging area, it may be too soon to develop standards.
• Producing polls and content for The Couch involves many different stakeholders from across the Families Commission. Creating content is a collaborative process. Is there a way to encourage more input into the 'editorial board'?
• Further efforts with already good data visualisations. Can poll results be made more engaging, or even interactive?
• A work programme for the Families Commission that would pick up some of its recommendations.