Market research in public education: AASA keeps its ear to the ground to devise strategic messages

School Administrator, March, 2004 by Michael A. Gross

Most likely, as you are reading this, survey research is being conducted somewhere in your state, city or even neighborhood. Political candidates are conducting surveys to uncover the attitudes of their constituents; the corporate world is conducting research to test the desirability of new products and services; and academics are commissioning studies on all manner of topics.

We can gauge the importance of marketing research simply through an examination of the wide range of organizations that use research. These organizations include small and large businesses, manufacturing and technology companies, policymakers, nonprofit organizations and government agencies.

Marketing research focuses on the identification of customer needs. To determine these needs, researchers gather information that subsequently can be used for various purposes, such as positioning an organization against its competition or strategic planning. While the customers, products and needs in the area of public education differ from business, marketing research principles can be equally useful.

A Pressing Issue

Each quarter, Ipsos-Public Affairs asks a sampling of Americans: "In your opinion, what are the most important problems facing the United States today?" The most recent results, gathered from Jan. 5-7, 2004, demonstrate that despite concerns about unemployment, terrorism and health care coverage, education was identified as an important problem by nearly one quarter of respondents (22%), on par with the number of respondents selecting war (20%) and the economy (26%) as the key issue of the day. Despite the overwhelming amount of news coverage devoted to the economy and terrorism, a significant proportion of Americans still believe education is a pressing problem in this country.

While clearly important information, by itself this does not produce a conclusion that educational leaders can act on. To understand the needs of parents and voters regarding public education, AASA contracted Ipsos-Public Affairs to conduct education research on its behalf. This research program is designed to discover public attitudes about education, track these opinions across time and help develop a strategic information campaign.

One of the most useful marketing research tools that has been applied to education research is the qualitative focus group. Focus groups are an excellent means to uncover the ways in which parents and voters think and speak about education. Focus groups allow researchers to ask why people think the way they do on a certain issue.

In focus groups conducted for AASA last summer, Ipsos-Public Affairs found that among the parents and voters we spoke with, perceptions of the education system were mixed. Teachers received a lot of sympathy and were seen as dealing with circumstances beyond their control. Administrators received some sympathy as well. Participants were not likely to blame administrators but were likely to hold them responsible for increasing communication with and involvement of parents.

Public Thinking

More important to the development of a strategic communications campaign, the focus groups helped uncover how people think about public education and why they think that way. Specifically, we wanted to understand what people were seeing, reading and hearing about education in the news. In addition to awareness of the education news, we also discussed the specific content in order to see what types of news people thought of as positive and negative. Further, we discussed the various sources of news.

Overall, participants reported seeing little positive news about education. Most negative stories focused on funding problems and safety issues and came from state and national sources. Any positive news came mostly from local news sources and focused primarily on improving test scores and higher graduation rates. More importantly, from a communications point of view, was the finding that parents absorb news about schools; nonparents ignore a lot of news about education, both good and bad. This clearly has implications for delivering a positive message about public education to the general public.

The findings from the focus groups conducted in July were used to develop two quantitative telephone surveys, one administered in late August and the other in late October. Both surveys were administered to roughly 1,000 adults nationwide. The margin of error associated with these surveys was 3.1 percent.

The importance of the telephone surveys lies in their ability to determine in a statistically reliable way where the attitudes of the American public fall on issues of importance to education leaders. Quantitative surveys permit education leaders to see the distribution of public support on critical issues and determine, in a meaningful way, how effective their efforts are at swaying public opinion. Quantitative surveys provide concrete means for measuring progress (or lack of it).

To address the needs of AASA, namely understanding the dynamics of public opinion on education in order to develop an effective strategic communication campaign, the Ipsos-Public Affairs surveys in August and October focused on the American public's awareness of education news, the sources of education news, the credibility of news sources and the content of education news. These elements define the needs of education consumers (parents) and the public at large (the majority of voters who do not have children in school). By determining the needs of the public in regard to public education, AASA has critical information that enables the association to tailor messages for education leaders to use to influence attitudes on public education in a positive way.