February 26, 2020
Measuring Our Impact, Resetting Our Goals: What We’ve Learned from Your Feedback
By Sierra Lewandowski
In November and December 2019, the Center for New York City Affairs (CNYCA) at The New School circulated a readership survey to our mailing list. The goal: assessing how we are fulfilling our mission of informing local social and economic policy change. The survey invited readers and stakeholders to provide information related to their professional work, policy interests, and knowledge of and engagement with the Center.
The findings below are based on a response sample of 329 individuals. CNYCA acknowledges this self-selected sample may not be representative of our broader audience; it is nonetheless a sufficiently large sample for us to glean insights and respond to your feedback.
The Center for New York City Affairs’ readership spans various sectors. Respondents identified as “concerned citizens,” “service providers,” “activists,” and “policymaker /government employees” (and often placed themselves in more than one such category).
The survey asked readers to express their interests concerning a range of 17 policy areas; the top issues of concern were housing affordability, poverty, racial equity, and public education. Readers also demonstrated interest in the connections across policy issues, with a vast majority selecting three or more policy areas as important to them.
Readers engage with the Center mostly by reading Urban Matters and our published research reports (cited by roughly 88 percent and 83 percent of respondents, respectively), and also by sharing the Center’s publications with others (mentioned by 64.6 percent of respondents). Strong majorities of respondents deemed the Center’s published work to be “timely,” “well-written and engaging,” and providing “rigorous research that is grounded in data.”
A majority of respondents recognized the Center as having influenced the way in which they think about their own work (see accompanying bar chart), and some cited the Center’s influence on specific decisions they’ve made in their professional work.
The survey also encouraged readers to suggest ways that we can improve our work. In this “open comment” section, respondents expressed a desire for a more diverse set of viewpoints coming from the Center and encouraged improved branding and marketing of the Center’s work. Readers were also interested in seeing more work from the Center relating to housing affordability, environmental issues, elderly issues, and mental health. In response, the Center intends to deepen our partnership with experts at The New School and with external policy entities to cover an even broader range of issues.
We are grateful to all survey participants, readers, and stakeholders for their continued support of the Center’s work and for your engagement in helping us achieve our goal of identifying practicable approaches to creating a more just and equitable city.