Guide

Surveys: asking the congregation

How do I hear from our people directly, repeatedly, without reading anyone's private answers?

Surveys are longitudinal: you run the same survey as waves over time, so you can watch a number move rather than reading a single snapshot. Two surveys are built in — a broader church health assessment and a short pulse — and you can also write your own.

Wave
One run of a survey with its own open and close. Comparing waves is where the value is: run the same pulse each quarter.
Invites
Sent by email to Planning Center people who have an email address on their record. You can scope a wave to a campus or membership group.
Shareable link
Every wave also has a public link on your Disciplytics address you can put in a bulletin, text or slide for people you don't have emails for.
Response rate
Invites sent against responses received, per wave — read it before you read the results.
Segments
Results split by campus or membership, using the person's Planning Center record rather than anything the respondent has to type.

Results are aggregate-only. No one — not your staff, not Disciplytics — can open an individual submission from the app, and any segment with fewer than 5 responses is suppressed rather than shown. Tell your congregation that plainly when you invite them; it is the reason the answers will be honest.

  1. 1Open Surveys and choose a built-in survey or create your own.
  2. 2Start a wave, optionally scoped to a campus or membership group.
  3. 3Send invites to synced email addresses, and share the public link for everyone else.
  4. 4Leave it open one to two weeks, then read the aggregate results and segment breakdowns.
  5. 5Repeat the same survey next quarter and compare waves.

Example

A pulse wave in January returns 61% agreement on "I know how to take my next step here"; the April wave returns 74% after you rewrote the connect card process. One campus stays at 58% — that is where to put attention, and it is visible without reading a single individual answer.

Where to click: Surveys