Results of Badge News 2017 summer survey

We surveyed our readership. This is what we found out.

Published in

We Are Open Co-op

4 min readSep 1, 2017

At the start of this year, We Are Open Co-op partnered with three sponsors to launch Badge News, a regular newsletter for the Open Badges community. We’ve been pleased with the response and growth, and are thankful to Badgr, Credly, and Open Badge Factory for making it possible.

Although there’s plenty we can tell around engagement from MailChimp, the platform we use to send out Badge News, we wanted to give subscribers the opportunity to tell us bit more about themselves. So we came up with a survey that we ran over the summer.

We used Typeform for the survey, linking to it from a single question based on the net promoter score approach. This then led to further questions.

At the time of writing we have 568 subscribers to Badge News, of whom 50 responded to the survey (8.8%). While this is disappointing from a quantitative point of view, we did get some rich feedback from a more qualitative angle.

How likely are you to recommend Badge News to a friend or colleague?

Average score: 8.1.

50/50 people responded to this question

Interestingly, this score was lowered by some who responded that they wouldn’t know who to share it with!

A sample of other responses:

“It’s an excellent resource for anyone exploring badges, and I like that it centres on up to date news and articles.”
“Sometimes too focused on the ‘partners’ who support the newsletter.”
“It’s a comprehensive summary of what’s happening in the badging world.”
“I don’t feel like you reach out to outside of your community/bubble to see what others are doing unless they contact you.”
“It fits my enthusiasm about badging.”

What is your gender?

This can be a fraught question when it comes survey design. After reading advice from around the web, instead of a list of options, we kept it to Male/Female/Other.

Note: every question was optional.

47/50 people responded to this question

Male: 53%
Female: 47%

What is your age?

We used standard age ranges used by many survey tools, including Typeform.

49/50 people responded to this question

35–44: 35%
25–34: 29%
55–64: 18%
45–54: 16%
65–74: 2%

No respondents were in the following categories: under 18, 18–24, and 75 or older.

What’s your country of residence?

We used Typeform’s built-in tools to allow people to choose from any of the 202 countries listed in their system.

49/50 people responded to this question

United States of America: 51%
United Kingdom: 20%
Ireland: 6%
Netherlands: 4%
Portugal: 4%

Of the others who responded, we have one subscriber (2%) in each of the following places: Australia, Canada, Ecuador, Finland, France, Lithuania, and Oman.

Which industry do you work in?

Again, we took Typeform’s standard ways of dividing people by sector. We weren’t surprised with the results, given how prevalent badges are in Higher Ed.

43/44 people responded to this question

Higher Education: 45%
Education Management: 16%
Non-Profit Organization Management: 8%
Primary/Secondary Education: 8%
E-Learning: 6%
Information Technology & Services: 6%
Civic & Social Organization: 4%

Of the others who responded, we have one subscriber (2%) in each of the following industries: , Construction, Design, and Professional Training & Coaching.

How many employees does your organization have?

Another standard question provided by Typeform.

47/50 people responded to this question

500 or more: 40%
51–200: 23%
2–10: 23%
11–50: 6%
It’s just me: 6%

How did you discover Badge News?

We’re particularly interested in the discoverability of our newsletter, so we asked how people came across it.

48/50 people responded to this question

Open Badges Google Group: 25%
Twitter: 23%
Word of mouth: 23%
We Are Open blog posts: 21%
Presentation: 8%

Interestingly, nobody discovered Badge News via the other social sites we mentioned (Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare).

Anything else you’d like to see in Badge News?

We gave respondents the opportunity to add any other comments.

35/50 people responded to this question

A selection of responses:

“I think that it is a useful means of staying up to date with developments. I am not sure what else I want from the newsletter.”
“More badge examples and case studies.”
“All good, in fact I need to go back through the archives.”
“Maybe some examples of newly created badges that are available to apply for.”
“The content depends on community controbutions. [sic] So far it was really good collection of essential updates.”

Conclusion

It’s difficult to make definitive statements from such a small sample size, but this survey has given us an insight into some aspects of our readership. For example, it’s likely that (as we thought) a large proportion of readers are based in the USA and work in Higher Education.

The other data is more open to interpretation (and distortion). For example, it may be that some of the demographic questions simply show that people who are in their twenties and thirties are more likely to respond to surveys. Likewise with how people discovered the newsletter: it may be that those who participate in forums are more likely to respond to surveys!

It’s been a useful experience for us, not least because of some of the comments we elicited from the final question. Badge News is for and, ideally, by the community, so perhaps we need to make it clear that the way we make the newsletter better is from contributions across the board.

Lots to ponder. Thanks to those who took part!