Not a day goes by where there isn’t a request to complete a survey – buying shoes: Did you have a good experience when you bought shoes recently? Speaking to your phone provider: Please take a moment to let us know how we did today. It’s fatiguing and seems unrelenting.
Unfortunately, especially for those who hate doing them, the humble survey has become a preferred way to garner insights and to help track performance.
The GrainGrowers team is very aware of how many survey requests growers get and we certainly don’t want to add to the survey pain you endure.
We, wherever possible, don’t push other organisation’s surveys through to you and prioritise just the one major survey annually. Our 2024 survey is live now and that’s what prompted this post.
Last week, I spoke to some members querying some of the survey questions we asked around cropping area. They were great chats and on the back of those, I wanted to share some info about why we ask certain things, what we use survey insights for, how we ensure your data is protected and importantly, what information remains completely anonymised.
Why have you asked these questions?
The GrainGrowers survey has a range of questions around postcode, age, your role in the grain business, total arable area, percentage of on-farm income derived from grain, livestock, other. This information lets us differentiate and better understand the issues that are most important to specific groups of growers. With over 20,000 grain growers in Australia, the issues are often not uniform.
For example, larger enterprises might be more focused on access to and retention of staff while smaller enterprises might be more focused on input cost and availability.
We often see large differences in how growers prioritise issues when grouped by age. There are generalisations yet grouping them helps us better understand our vast membership.
Likewise, the way people prioritise issues varies across different growing regions and asking questions on location helps us identify potential policy risks to the grains industry. Importantly, postcode data is not provided to GrainGrowers and all responses are aggregated by ‘State and Territory’ or ‘Region’ when we receive the final report.
I’ve provided feedback to you, what’s next?
Each year, we collect Annual Policy Survey data and make sure we are working on the right issues that matter most to you. For example, for the last two years, the survey data has highlighted the following issues as the biggest priorities for growers (and things that GrainGrowers can influence and help improve).
Like every organisation, we have a finite number of resources, so we want to put our energy into the issues that matter most.
If the survey shows that these issues are changing, we can adjust accordingly. Specifically in our policy and advocacy work, there are literally hundreds of issues that are raised with us. We need the survey data to test the extent of the problem, particularly as a national organisation. Is it in an isolated area, can we address it through education and awareness raising, or do we need to work with government or industry to get a solution? Without this data to provide factual evidence, this is a really difficult task.
What about privacy? What do you know about me?
Data privacy has become front of mind in recent years as we’ve seen some problematic breaches. We all have that feeling that more and more information is being sought. You need to know how your data is being used and how identifiable you are.
The GrainGrowers Annual Policy Survey is completely managed by a reputable, credentialled, expert market research organisation. They follow the market research code of practice and accordingly, our survey is confidential research. Information provided by you in this survey is combined with the responses of other growers who participate in the survey. No individual responses are identified.
Our research partners provide a thorough analysis to us with some important exclusions – they do not provide postcode information (this is just used to ensure they don’t receive too many responses from one postcode which may skew the sample), nor do they share any personally identifiable information. Your email (if you provide it) is used solely for contacting competition winners only.
A huge thank you to those of you who have taken the time to complete the 2024 survey. I hope some of this background eases a little of the survey pain and explains in more detail our approach. If at any time the GrainGrowers team can provide any further information, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
