Yardstick Parks User Surveys were developed in around 2008 initially as a paper based intercept survey designed to target park users and measure satisfaction with a range of parks related services and features. The product was initially called Parkcheck and is still known as this by some users.
The surveys were taken online in 2015 with the development of a web-based survey application that enabled collection of surveys in the field on a mobile device with off-line capability. Surveys can be uploaded where wifi or cell phone service is available and data can be reported immediately.
Surveys have a set of standard questions that are relatively fixed but have undergone some improvements in wording over the years. Organisations can also choose from a library of optional questions or develop and include new optional questions of their own for specific issues.
Survey results are available in online reports in much the same way as benchmarks results. However, organisations also receive a manually produced report which comprises a summary of results in pdf and word format using charts produced in excel. The report is around 30 to 40 pages long and is produced from templates in word and excel derived from previous reports.
Since going online, the survey tool has been used around 110 times in Scandinavia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
