Resource: How to communicate your next Pulse survey

Whether you’re launching your first Pulse survey or your twentieth, how you communicate each survey to your team and students is essential. Clarity about the survey process leads to good participation, which leads to actionable data that enables you to make better decisions. Here we provide you with an overview, so you have all the tools you need to launch your next survey with confidence. We have also prepared a slide deck template that you can use: Introducing Students to Kelvin.

Why measure this?

Measuring students', parents', and your staff's perceptions about social-emotional learning and the culture at your schools is an important step to helping your team and students do their best. Loads of research suggests that a positive learning environment, strengthening relationships, and improving students' SEL competencies (like a Growth Mindset, Self-Agency, and Self-Management) have a profound and lasting impact on student achievement, school safety, teacher turnover, and even chronic absenteeism. Through Kelvin's Pulse surveys, we can answer questions (and gather metrics) like:

• How do we cultivate a culture of equity, motivation and self-agency?
• How do we compare to other schools?
• How do we help students and teachers become change agents and understand they can help create a better place to learn?

Core themes to cover in your communications

Every district, school, or organization will have unique core themes to cover throughout their Pulse survey communications. However, there are core themes that come up across the organizations we work with at Kelvin. Let's explore some common core themes that are helpful to share ahead of time with your respondents.

1. What we're measuring
   
   Help people understand the importance of SEL and school culture, and how those things relate to tangible results. We want everyone to understand why this stuff is important and why their feedback is critical to building the culture we all want.
2. What the survey will allow us to do
   
   You want to help people understand what measuring these things will allow the organization to do. We suggest sharing what outcomes will be achieved not just for the leadership team, but also for teachers and students in terms of their own lived experience at school.
3. What we need from you (the students, staff, or parents)
   
   Participation, honesty, and comments. Great participation leads to great data, which leads to great results. We want people to provide honest and candid feedback about their school experience, what works well and what doesn't. Lastly, in addition to the quantitative feedback collected through scale-based questions, we want to gather qualitative feedback from employee comments.
4. What you can expect
   
   Results, outcomes, and involvement. In terms of results, let people know who will see what once the survey is closed. We want people to understand the outcomes that they can expect, like taking action. Lastly, it’s not just about getting people to participate, it’s keeping them involved throughout the process and taking action.
5. How we’ll protect your confidentiality
   
   You may share things like how your data will be treated, as well as information about the kind of demographics that will be included in the survey. The idea is to ensure respondents that Kelvin is a safe place to share open, honest feedback (and that the feedback won't be used punitively).
6. Preparing people for feedback and action
   
   Get people excited about the process of actually acting on feedback and ultimately guiding them towards focus and action, not just reflecting on results.