Whānau Rangahau Ipurangi -Family Blog Survey

Method:
Of around 60 families we contacted the 30 on our email list regarding their blog usage, using survey monkey online surveys.
We received 16 responses and one late feedback via email.
Families had two weeks to respond and had a reminder email with one week to go.

Results 1:
Mum's viewed the blog twice as often as dads, who viewed it about as often as the children at the kindergarten.
Non kindergarten children viewed it occasionally, grandparents never and other family and friends very occasionally.

Discussion 1:
We'd hoped the blog being viewable from home would have seen more dad's using it. We also hoped this would be a good way for grandparents and relatives to catch up on children's activities. We may have to look at what are the barriers to participation and how we can address these.
We have had some anecdotal feedback parents do pass on links to family and friends and that children who have gone to school view it and enjoy seeing what their friends are doing.

Results 2:
25% visited the blog once a week (4) , a further 25% once a month (4) Others visited the blog only occasionally or 6.3% (1) never.

Discussion 2:
We are definitely getting hits, 50+ in the last 24 hours. The nice thing about it is that it is there when you want to see it. While we would like to see more frequent viewing by families, perhaps we need to shift our expectations.

Results 3:
70% of parents said they used it to catch up on happenings at kindergarten.

Results 4:
91.7% of parents felt informed about what was happening at kindergarten when viewing with their children.

2/3+ of parents responded viewing it with their children lead to discussion about what had been going on at kindergarten.

40% Got ideas to use at home.

But only 16.7% feedback by leaving comments.

Discussion 4:
The discussion with children aspect was great to hear, one of our hopes for the blog was that it would be used to help children share their interests between home and kindergarten. While use of comments to feedback to kindergarten was low, feed back via comments has increased since we put out our how to comment post and the survey.

Results 7:
81.3% of parents wanted the blog to stay in an open format, with 18.8% wanting it invitation only.


Results 8:
14 of 16 parents indicated they would like their child to have their own e profile, some wanted closed ones, others wanted open ones, everyone who wanted one indicated they would contribute to them, and some would invite others.

Discussion 8:
This is really exciting, it is to be hoped, with a more personalised approach, as is possible with e profiles, a much greater family participation will result. We will move this ahead now to.

Results 5: How is the blog useful
15 replies total. 14 very positive along the lines of it keeping parents informed, 2 giving parents ideas, 1 child felt famous, 1 parent would use the blog eventually but currently had an over full schedule.

Results 6: How could it be improved
Not easy to use on dial up.
Needs to have all the children, not just a few.
Can be word heavy. (Like this post -sorry)
Titles for each section to be written about.
4 great as it is.

Discussion 5 and 6:
Very positive feedback, we'll look to be more inclusive now our permissions are sorted, and e profiles should also help to personalise the blog.
Dial up is a definite barrier for our rural families with limited internet access options. Picture and video heavy is certainly not friendly to dial up speeds.
While the labels at the bottom help to organise the posts and quickly find everything in a topic, we will need to look at organisation, now we're posting so much.


Thankyou everyone for your feedback it has been a great help.