When you start down the path to deliver the Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey, you should expect to follow a circular route along the “data cycle.” Data collection is most effective when it is supported by equally significant efforts to understand it and then move into action.  

The “data cycle” that the Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey follows has
four main stages:

The Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey is based on UNICEF Principles that guide your actions along the data cycle (see Appendix for the UNICEF Data Principles). This toolkit provides guidance to help you incorporate these principles at every stage of the cycle.

Gathering data can be useful as a one-time exercise – you will know more when you are done than you did at the beginning of the process. But it is most powerful as one stage in a cycle that repeats itself, like an ascending spiral, particularly when the cycle repeats on a regular schedule. Future iterations of the survey will reveal areas of progress, as well as persistent and emerging challenges, and enable communities to take stock of and build on successful actions.

Many population surveys are repeated after three or four years, providing sufficient time to observe changes. Choosing the interval between surveys can be based on several variables:

1. What is your plan for action related to the survey data? Ideally, you want enough time to complete initiatives and see progress, but not so much time that momentum is lost.
2. When will the resources, both financial and human, be in place to repeat the survey?
3. If repeating the full survey is not possible, can you check in on priority areas?
4. Is it optimal to conduct the survey alongside or separated from other local surveys?
5. If you pair the survey with the collection of administrative data (e.g., to create a full data set aligned with the Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being), what is the interval in which the administrative data sets will be available?