Case Study : Campaigning for fairer term-time holiday laws with MyCommunity.net
Parents Want a Say is a not-for-profit campaign group lobbying against the current ban on term-time holidays for schoolchildren. Having previously hosted a successful online petition, Craig Langman and the PWAS team sought to publish an online survey to gather the views and experiences of the holiday ruling from supporters and the general public. Data gathered would be used to produce a report for the Department for Education on public opposition to the term-time holiday laws.
The Project
In order to make their report representative, PWAS needed to gather evidence from a diverse set of respondents. Maximising the accessibility of their survey was key to making this happen. This was made possible by the unique MyCommunity.net design, which encourages users to answer surveys on topics they wouldn’t usually engage with.
As well as supporting the PWAS team to write their survey, MyCommunity worked closely with the group’s chosen media partner to promote the survey across social media and the press. As part of this, we offered all respondents the chance to win an iPad Mini for completing the survey, provided by the MyCommunity team.
The Result
In four weeks, PWAS gathered more than 1600 responses to their survey. Using MyCommunity.net, Craig and his team were able to cut and splice their qualitative and quantitative data using our interactive digital report. This allowed them to analyse relationships within the data using demographic and geographic profiling. 64% of respondents stated that the term-time holiday laws had negatively affected them, for example; 64.1% of those respondents were in full-time employment. Craig and his team could therefore make a business case against the law. Our reports also proved that survey responses had been gathered from across the UK and across a diverse range of ages, genders, occupational groups and educational backgrounds.
Having access to insights like these means that Craig and his team can make balanced and evidence-based recommendations in their report to the Department for Education. By demonstrating who and how the term-time holiday laws affect the UK public, PWAS can also tailor their future campaigns to gather maximum support.
What Happened Next?
Following analysis of their results, Craig and the PWAS team are preparing to write and submit a whitepaper report on term-time holidays to the Department for Education. The group are considering hosting a second survey at MyCommunity.net to gather views from travel industry professionals on the same issue. This second survey would be hosted ‘privately’, accessible to respondents via a chosen URL.
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