It’s very possible that your state or school district may adopt policies mandating active consent. So, your first task will be to gain support of those most affected by the new procedure: parents, teachers and administrators who will touch the survey. As a quick note these active consent strategies can be helpful to anyone looking to increase their data collection participation weather active consent or passive consent. If you have not read Part One you can find it here.
Five Active Consent Strategies to Increase Participation
Active Consent Strategy 1: Honesty Is the Best Policy. In this case, less is not more. In our ISA Data administrative instruction packet, we give educators, parents and community members as much relevant information as possible as clearly as possible. You can take our information tools and customize your message to the unique challenges your school community faces.
Many of the topics that we examine in health surveys can become sticky, hot-button issues. A health survey covers drugs and alcohol use, bullying and violence, as well as questions on other challenging behaviors and mental health status. Although controversial, these issues are important to the development of a child and parents rightly take an interest in, and have strong opinions on, the topics presented in a health survey.
Active Consent Strategy 2: Know the Language. The way we talk about and present these topics can have an impact on the way information is received. For good active consent strategies and to decrease conflict (and increase the chances of communication), we can look at alternative ways to discuss the issues that come up in the survey data. For example, instead of evidence-based programming, consider using a less charged phrase like tested and effective programs. Many times, the words themselves matter because the terms have become politically charged, even if the underlying concept is simple and non-controversial. Watch out for words or phrases that are known to create division (e.g., entitlement vs. benefit; illegal vs. undocumented). And, stay away from current lingo (e.g., woke), often misunderstood and generally creates more division than unity.
Active Consent Strategy 3: Communicate! Explain Why the Survey is Conducted. One traditional form of communicating about the survey is a letter or email to the parent. You have to activate the parents to get active consent. Communications to parents should be transparent, clear and honest and should answer, without hedging, the following questions:
Why do we do the survey? What need will it fulfill? How will it make a difference? Parents/communities can get buried in surveys and, with active consent may have even more reason to keep this request buried. Our ISA materials will help you make this survey stand out, and you can embellish by giving it specific community, school and student purpose.
Know how many surveys are being provided to students in a school year. Survey fatigue is real. Students, parents, and almost everyone receive a lot of survey requests. Think of the following example. After buying a bag of sand, you receive a survey conducted by the home improvement store. How was the sand? How would you rate the quality of the sand out of 5 stars? Please answer these other fifty questions about your bag of sand. Really? It was a bag of sand, and why did they need to know? You are less likely to take future surveys because you no longer feel like they are meaningful or important. The strategies outlined herein will serve to differentiate this survey from all of the other requests that bombard students and their parents.
The questions about why we do the survey provide a chance to take the focus off the perceived negative process (the survey) and bring the focus back to the positive result (the data). It’s important to make your health survey stand out from the crowded survey landscape by letting parents know the end-game: better programming and additional funding for their children’s education.
Use active consent strategies like thinking like a parent, like a teacher, staff or educational leadership. On the top of their minds will be: why do we want to do this? What need will it fulfill? How will it make a difference?
Make sure you understand these questions. It’s just as important as communicating them with your stakeholders. Not just parents, but teachers, staff, and leadership should have answers to these questions. While each survey is different, these examples can help guide you in developing your response to the question above.
- Example 1: Why we want to do this. Our coalition uses this data to measure youth tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use and identify needs for programming. We can then seek funding for support and resources, such as community center staffing, prevention programs for youth and family, and after-school programs for youth. These types of programs not only increase opportunities for learning and positive participation, but many have been proven to keep more kids off the street and out of trouble.
- Example 2: Fulfilling a need. One of our students died from a fentanyl overdose and we want to understand if this is a larger problem that we need to address in the school.
- Example 3: How it will make a difference. The data that we collect from this survey are used by the departments of education and health to determine student behaviors. The results of the survey provide data-driven insight on how funding should be spent most effectively to help reduce identified problems, like violence and drug use.
Active Consent Strategy 4: Demonstrate What the Survey Data Mean to Your Organization. Being open and honest is a way for you to begin to bring others over to your side. Be prepared to talk about your organization and what the survey means for you personally and your community more broadly. Talk about money, talk about jobs. Again, honesty is the best policy. How does the data benefit your organization? Consider these examples.
- Example 1. For our organization, we have data collection requirements to receive funding for the programs that we choose to implement. Currently, we receive a grant for $150,000/year to pay for the following programs that benefit our students [name the top 2-3 programs implemented with grant funding].
- Example 2. The survey data can show how student behaviors are changing and whether the programs we use are working. We know we are spending taxpayer money on these programs and the survey is a way to hold us and the providers of the services accountable to you.
Strategy 5: Attach the Purse Strings: Cost of Drug Prevention Programs
For another active consent strategy, don’t be afraid to talk about how much money the student programming is costing – it’s a fact and its hard to argue with transparency since most coalitions work on such tight budgets. Share how much taxpayer money or charitable donations you are receiving and show how you are spending that money to help students become the best they can be. If you get pushback because you’re using government funding, demonstrate how the funding goes directly to supporting students and has a very lean budget – perhaps the least wasteful of just about all government or other-funded programs that exist. As needed, back up your claims with a summary budget, showing the small percentage of the budget targeted to obtaining student behavior trends and data.
How ISA Data Can Help with Active Consent Strategies and Requirements
The ISA packet of instructions sent to every participating school has always included a series of materials to be used in preparing for and administering the survey. For active consent, ISA provides a form template that includes place for parent/guardian signature and date.
Depending on your school district’s resources, your IT team may choose to develop or use an existing electronic platform (mobile or desktop) to record parent approvals. You can use our strategies listed above and share them with others. We want everyone to be able to get the best data possible.
