SURVEY SERVICES
Thank you for your interest in working with CivicPulse! A core part of CivicPulse’s mission is to expand opportunities for top-quality research focused on local and state governance.
CivicPulse is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that runs surveys of public officials in the United States. Our mission is to generate insights about the public sector through better access to reliable data and research. We work with researchers and organizations across an array of academic disciplines and professional domains.
CivicPulse offers the ability to conduct custom surveys of elected policymakers, top appointed executives, and key department heads in local government. We also offer surveys of civil service staff across a range of departments in local and state government, as well as the federal government on a case-by-case basis.
In addition, we conduct a national omnibus survey of local policymakers once a year by pairing modules from different researchers together to provide a lower-cost option for researchers.
Options and Pricing
Custom Surveys
At CivicPulse, we define a “respondent type” by the combination of level of government, role, and department. Our full list of 35 respondent types can be found in our downloadable survey application guidelines. Below we list a summary of the options.
Table 1. Available respondent types for CivicPulse custom surveys.
Pricing for custom surveys is composed of a “base price” and a “marginal price” (which is multiplied by the number of respondents). The base price is the same for all respondent types, reflecting the fixed effort required by our staff to ensure each survey is developed and executed effectively. The current base price is $5,000.
Custom Survey Price = $5000 + Marginal price x Number of respondents
The marginal price depends on two factors: (a) the level of scarcity of the sampling frame and (b) the expected survey length. In the last column of Table 1, we assign each row to one of three possible scarcity levels. In Table 2, we display four marginal price options—for 3, 5, 7, and 10 minutes in survey length—for each level of scarcity.
Table 2. Marginal pricing ($/respondent) for custom surveys based on scarcity level and expected survey length.
Researchers may propose additional customizations of the sampling frame. For example, some researchers in the past have requested that respondents only represent local governments above a certain population size, or in a particular region of the country. Based on the difficulty of achieving the requested customization, CivicPulse will assess feasibility and, if feasible, provide a maximum sample size and a pricing quote.
2023 Omnibus Survey
Pricing for the 2023 national omnibus survey of local policymakers is provided in Table 3. We limit the number of options for the omnibus survey to make it easier to pair researchers’ modules together on the same questionnaire.
Table 3. Four pricing options for 2023 Omnibus National Survey of Local Policymakers.
Restricted Access Dataset
CivicPulse also offers the service of a Restricted Access Dataset (RAD) for researchers to have access to identifiable government and jurisdictional information (e.g., government name, Census ID, and additional community characteristics), subject to a data sharing agreement that prohibits the researcher from publicly posting the RAD or any information that could identify a specific department or government publicly. CivicPulse provides the RAD service for $600 for a custom survey project, and $500 for an omnibus survey project.
How To Apply
Because of the specialized challenges associated with conducting an effective survey with public officials, we encourage interested researchers to communicate with us early on in their project development process. You can do so by writing directly to our Managing Director, Nathan Lee, at nathanlee@civicpulse.org. Inquiries about projects in any stage of development are welcome.
Get started with your application by downloading these documents:
Custom Surveys
Custom surveys are accepted and fielded on a rolling basis. A custom survey can take between two and four months from the initial inquiry to data delivery, though the amount of time varies by project.
A common timeline for a custom survey is as follows:
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Month 1
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Researcher reaches out to CivicPulse with preliminary idea.
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Researcher and CivicPulse iterate to identify optimal sampling strategy and questionnaire design for research project.
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Researcher submits for IRB once questionnaire decided.
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Researcher initiates payment once time estimation decided.
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CivicPulse programs survey and shares link with researcher for review.
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Month 2
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CivicPulse completes pilot data collection.
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CivicPulse follows up with researchers if changes are needed.
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CivicPulse initiates full data collection.
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Month 3
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CivicPulse completes full data collection.
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CivicPulse completes data anonymization and delivery (with reference guide) to researcher.
2023 Omnibus Survey
The process for the 2023 National Omnibus Survey of Local Policymakers is more standardized. Interested researchers must apply by January 15th, 2023. The application consists of three parts:
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Preliminary questionnaire (.docx)
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Preliminary time estimation (.xlsx)
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Cover letter outlining your research question, a brief summary of your questionnaire, and any additional comments or questions you may have
You can submit your application directly to our Managing Director, Nathan Lee, at nathanlee@civicpulse.org. If you have questions prior to the deadline, do not hesitate to reach out.
Below is an overview of the subsequent process.
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Jan 15 - Feb 15.
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CivicPulse reviews researchers’ proposals.
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Feb 15 - March 15.
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CivicPulse goes back-and-forth with researchers to revise questionnaires as needed and agree on time estimation.
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Researchers submit for IRB once questionnaire decided.
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Researchers initiate payment once time estimation decided.
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March 15 – April 1.
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CivicPulse programs survey and shares test link for review with all researchers.
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April 1 – April 15.
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Pilot data collection.
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CivicPulse follows up with researchers as needed in case changes are needed to reduce attrition.
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April 1 – June 1.
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Full data collection.
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June 1 – June 15.
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Data anonymization and delivery (with reference guide) to researchers.
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Developing Your Questionnaire
Unlike most public opinion surveys—where respondents are incentivized to complete the survey no matter how it is designed—our surveys rely on public officials who voluntarily answer questions because they believe it is serving the public good. As such, content on CivicPulse surveys must be engaging and easy to comprehend. Our team will work with you to minimize survey drop-off.
Here we offer four general considerations to keep in mind before moving on to more specific guidelines for developing your questionnaire.
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First, please make sure to use plain, clear English (rather than Academic or Industry English!).
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Second, CivicPulse respondents represent a wide range of communities, including many small, more rural communities. Sometimes researchers may not be aware of this and make their content too “big city” centric, leading some respondents to feel the survey is not for them and drop off.
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Third, keep in mind is that a significant portion of our respondents complete surveys on their mobile phones. Please make sure to keep in mind how the content will display on mobile.
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Fourth and finally, some types of content are explicitly prohibited. Specifically, we ask researchers to avoid the following:
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Overly complex tasks or questions
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Deception or any misleading language (explicit hypotheticals ok)
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Content designed to change behavior
For more detailed guidelines, please download the complete survey application guidelines.
Additional Information
Funding and Payment
We do not require proof of funding to apply for either a custom survey or a module on the omnibus survey. Once your application is accepted and your survey questionnaire is finalized, we will ask you to sign a Statement of Work.
Once you have reviewed the Statement of Work and signed it, we will send it back to you countersigned along with an invoice with instructions for payment. Please note that payment must be made prior to survey launch. If you anticipate any issues with funding or the payment timeline, please let us know ASAP. In particular, you may be required to establish CivicPulse as a vendor at your university or organization. If that requires additional paperwork on our end, let us know.
Institutional Review Board (IRB)
CivicPulse is a 501c(3) outside the purview of any particular university’s IRB jurisdiction. As such, it is your own responsibility to get the questionnaire approved by your institution’s IRB, if relevant. The questionnaire template provides our standard survey introduction language at the top of the document.
It is significantly shorter than the typical “consent language” used for many public opinion surveys. We strive to maintain a short survey introduction to reduce survey attrition, given that our survey respondents are government officials volunteering their very limited time. However, if modifications are required, please let us know and we will work closely with you to ensure the survey introduction complies with both CivicPulse’s operational requirements and your IRB’s research ethics guidelines.
Post-survey research brief
As a mission-driven nonprofit, we aim to both facilitate frontier research while also generating useful insights for the community that we are surveying. To that end, we are committed to following up within three months of closing the survey to the government community with some brief insights from each survey we conduct. We typically do this by writing up a short research brief based on a few items from your survey (pre-approved by you) that might be interesting to the local government community while also ensuring you don’t have to worry about being “scooped.” Rest assured: this does not mean more work for you. We are happy to write the research briefs ourselves and run them by you. That said, if you wish to work more closely with us, we would be happy to collaborate and coauthor them.