Describe the community, decision, and services to assess. Makeform builds a survey for resident priorities, unmet needs, access barriers, and comments.
Route responses to Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a starting point, tailor it, or send the prompt into the Makeform builder. These are examples, not resident data.
Audience
Residents across districts and neighborhoods
Format
Mobile-friendly survey with ranking and location context
Prompt size
255 chars
Example survey structure
Mobile-friendly survey with ranking and location context
Neighborhood or ZIP code
Which service areas matter most?
Rank your top three priorities
What prevents you from using services?
What should the city understand?
Suggested routing tags
Urgent needs
Access barriers
Neighborhood priorities
Ask both what residents need and what prevents them from using existing services. A low-use program may be hard to reach, not unnecessary.
Step 1
Define
decision, population, and service areas
Step 2
Ask
priorities, unmet needs, and barriers
Step 3
Compare
patterns across places and groups
Step 4
Plan
turn findings into service choices
Better planning input
Connect resident experience to a real planning choice. Separate importance from access and collect enough context to find patterns.
Use limited selections, ranking, or points so every option is not equally important.
Ask whether support is needed, whether it exists, and which cost, schedule, language, mobility, or awareness barrier stands in the way.
Optional context can reveal patterns; Prefer not to answer choices preserve respondent control.
Planning contexts
Keep a shared core, then add only questions needed by the process using the results.
Compare resident importance, satisfaction, and access across parks, transit, public works, libraries, and communications.
Find unmet household needs, referral gaps, preferred delivery formats, and requests for follow-up without turning the survey into intake.
Tie place-based comments and tradeoff questions to a defined budget, corridor, park, or program cycle.
Use common questions across partners and route service requests separately.
Survey workflow
Start with the decision, generate a draft, and test it with people who know the community.
Tell Makeform the population, geography, service categories, timeline, and choices the findings will inform.
Replace internal program names, shorten matrices, make sensitive questions optional, and add Prefer not to answer where appropriate.
Preview on a phone and check branches for different needs and follow-up choices.
Export structured answers, compare segments with adequate response context, read open comments, and document how findings informed the plan.
Question design choices
Combine structured measures with one focused comment to answer different planning questions.
Field guide
These sections connect respondent context, priorities, gaps, barriers, and optional follow-up.
Purpose and scope
Name the decision, area, effort, and review process without implying every request will be funded.
Priority areas
List clear service areas, then require a shortlist or ranking. Include Not sure and another option.
Current access
Ask whether residents use, need, can find, and consider a service adequate before calling it unmet.
Barriers
Offer cost, hours, transport, language, eligibility, accessibility, trust, and information, plus an open option.
Respondent context
Optional neighborhood, household role, age range, language, and community connection can support comparisons.
Follow-up path
Offer an optional path for updates or follow-up and direct time-sensitive requests elsewhere.
Related tools
Use live Makeform tools for the adjacent jobs: local feedback, demographic context, service intake, collaboration, and volunteer learning.
Collect place-specific comments outside a full needs-assessment cycle.
Open toolBuild optional context questions for comparing patterns across respondent groups.
Open toolMove people requesting direct assistance into a dedicated intake workflow.
Open toolGive organizations a separate route to propose partnerships and shared work.
Open toolExplore resident priorities when land, water, waste, or local environmental conditions are the focus.
Open toolLearn what volunteers see in service delivery and how their experience can improve.
Open toolFAQ
Practical answers for staff designing resident research for planning and service improvement.
It gathers resident views about priorities, service access, unmet needs, and barriers. Staff can combine answers and comments with other planning evidence. Results inform decisions but do not prove every resident shares the same experience.
Ask about connection to the area, services used, unmet needs, barriers, ranked priorities, preferred delivery or updates, optional context, and one focused comment. Keep questions tied to a decision.
Keep the main path easy to finish on a phone. Show follow-ups only for selected needs. Pilot each route and remove questions that will not change analysis, outreach, or a service choice.
Anonymous responses can work when names are unnecessary. Put optional contact permission at the end if staff offer updates or assistance. Describe the collection approach you configure before sharing.
Ask for a broad area only when useful and not overly identifying. Use the same core questions, examine response counts and outreach coverage, and do not treat self-selected responses as a census.
Yes. Let respondents choose a limited number, rank a shortlist, or distribute points. Ratings measure items independently; tradeoff questions reveal relative preference.
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and collect responses without a response cap. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge.
Review results, comments, and other evidence; note outreach gaps; and document what affected the plan. Share a plain-language summary and route individual help requests to the appropriate service process.
Turn resident experience into planning input.
