The feedback survey is a valuable opportunity to check how your participants react to the panel. This is a good opportunity to be reassured that the event went well, and often to receive suggestions on how to improve the event itself (timings, catering, location, etc). It is also an opportunity for participants to reflect and register their thoughts privately. 

New information may arise if they did not want to question the research process in public, because they want to inform the research team of something they did not want to disclose earlier, or because the opportunity to reflect prompts further insight. For example, the research team's suspicions that the original method for scoring outcomes against actions was too complicated was confirmed in the feedback forms, resulting in the simplified method presented in this course.  

In our pilot panels, the main themes of feedback (aside from the scoring method) were:

• The workshop was enjoyable and informative; it increased participants’ understanding of the topic, and of others’ views.

• It provided reassurance that many local residents share the opinion that treescapes are valued and worth improving.

• The evening’s presentations could have included somewhat more information.

• More information was required alongside the pre-panel survey. In particular, whilst the content of the visions were intuitively understandable as narratives, the survey needed to contextualise them to explain why there were four focuses and how they would link to the later panel.

Individual items of feedback included:

• Reflection on how personal responses differed from the consensus or some other sense of the ‘appropriate’ response (i.e. deviation from perceived normative trends).

• Particularly interesting new understanding

• Welcomed reassurance that local authorities (and universities) are acting to support and improve treescapes, and/or the wider environment

• Better understanding of local authority mechanisms, staff types, and ways to make own views known or acted upon

• Greater optimism on the potential for positive change

• An interest in being contacted with further information or follow-up opportunities