The Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey offers a robust stock-taking of the state of children and youth from their perspectives. For a broader overview, consider complementing the survey data with additional data, using the indicators in the Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being as a guide. The Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being includes indicators, such as the breastfeeding rate, that might be sourced from other surveys or administrative data available for your community within the past one to three years. 

This initial data analysis phase can be as narrow or broad as you would like to make it. The more stakeholders involved and the more access you have to specialized research and data analysis, the richer the insights are likely to be.

Visualizing data

Once the data and analysis are complete, various data visualization options can be used to present the data. The example below from National Health Scotland is a rose compass, which can be used to compare survey data points with the national averages or with previous survey data to show areas of relative progress. 

The ultimate survey communications tool is an easy-to-use, freely available, interactive online database and dashboard, as in the region of Halton, Ontario. This allows anyone with an interest to see the results in a variety of formats, query the public data and organize it in ways useful to them. This “open data” approach not only optimizes accessibility and transparency, but it also enables more groups and individuals to get involved in analyzing the clean data set, thus increasing the opportunity for insights that lead to actionable innovations.

A number of off-the-shelf software packages can facilitate this approach, with Tableau being the best known. While these packages are designed to be as intuitive as possible, they still require some expertise to construct and maintain. If one of your partners, potentially your research/data partner, has this capability, it can be a good way for them to contribute to the project.

Another excellent option is the Canada-based International Institute for Sustainable Development. They have developed a low-cost, open-source data visualization tool aimed at enabling smaller, not-for-profit organizations to map and track community data. They have a built-in alignment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which allows communities to compare how they are doing relative to Canada’s stated commitments. An introduction to the service is available at https://www.tracking-progress.org/.  

Some communities have taken a multi-stage approach to releasing results, first providing initial highlights, followed by access to a data report (or series) and then an interactive online platform. This approach recognizes the relative time it takes to develop these materials, while initiating a progressive release of information as early as possible.

Consider all of the possible ways to present the survey data discussed in this section, and be sure to ensure that your agreement with a research/data partner includes your preferences.