Who is interested in a good life for the elderly in rural areas?
The Challenge
Denk-mal-Kultur e.V.
The association Denk-mal-Kultur e.V. […] aims to continue to organize cultural highlights, but has also set itself the goal of preserving Heinersdorf’s historic village center and actively supporting the restoration of the church and the manor house. The association is primarily committed to the church and manor house Heinersdorf and wants to continue to offer cultural events there. Denk-mal-Kultur e.V. thus takes care of monuments and culture in a broader sense. At the moment, however, we are primarily concerned with the Heinersdorf Manor House project. (translated from here)
Denk-mal-Kultur e.V. primarily cares for the Heinersdorf Manor. Together with partners, Denk-mal-Kultur e.V. would like to establish an academy for self-determined aging. In this context, a practical research center tackling the question: „How can one best manage growing older in rural areas?“ should be established as well. When Denk-Mal-Kultur contacted CorrelAid, they were at the very beginning of scoping the project and asked for support in finding out whether the local population and potential stakeholders (politics, administration, care givers and medical staff) were interested in the endeavour of creating a practical research center. They had a rough survey draft but were seeking help in making it more precise, setting up an online survey, and analyzing the results to get actionable insights for the initiative that could help in further activities, e.g. contacting potential project partners or pursuing fundraising opportunities.
The Data
Data were collected as part of the project with a survey (more details below). In addition to the survey data, the CorrelAid team made use of Open Data available for the region from the Statistical Information System Berlin-Brandenburg (StatIS-BBB).
The Solution
CorrelAid supported in improving the survey design by designing not only the key questions with regards to the research center but also demographical questions such as gender and education. CorrelAid then implemented the online survey using SoGo. About 140 citizens as well as relevant stakeholders answered the survey.
Using the demographical data, the CorrelAid team was able to check whether there were differences across different potential users or stakeholders. In addition, the team used those demographics to evaluate the representativeness of the survey data: to do so, the team compared some of the characteristics (e.g. gender and education) to the offical statistics of the region.
The CorrelAid Team prepared a PDF report with many useful graphs and their interpretations. The analysis identified relevant interest groups, topics, communication channels, and forms of interaction. Among other results, it showed that the practical research center sparks more interest among women.
The Impact
The effects are twofold: First, the survey results indicated that there is a large interest among all that were surveyed, both among the population as well as the relevant stakeholders. This result not only gives all members of the Denk-Mal-Kultur steering committee for the “academy” and the practical research center a confidence boost but also makes it easier to approach ministries and other potential sponsers in fundraising.
Second, the survey results make it easier for the steering committee to rank activities by interest and potential support of local stakeholders. In short, it provides a solid, user-oriented foundation for future activities that are aimed at setting up the academy for self-determined aging and the practical research center.
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