Surveys
Thank you for taking the time to contribute to this important project. We recognise that services are working under increasing pressures, and we greatly appreciate the time and effort involved in completing this survey.
The Service | Team Survey (left button) should be completed by a team representative who can provide information about your service‘s staffing, caseload, workload, and service delivery model.
The Individual Clinician Survey (right button) is intended for all clinicians and clinical support assistants to complete individually. Each clinician should submit their own survey, in addition to a single Team Survey completed on behalf of their service.
*To help us produce robust and meaningful recommendations, we would be grateful if you could refer to your service data where possible, rather than relying on memory or estimates.
Before completing the survey, please take a moment to review the guidance below. These notes provide key definitions and additional information to support accurate, consistent and meaningful responses.
Survey Guidance
Before you begin
The surveys | Please make sure that you have checked the survey you are completing is the correct one. There should be one survey completed on behalf of the community paediatric team and one completed by each clinician and support assistant caring for patients.
The Service | Team Survey (left button) should be completed by a team representative who can provide information about your service’s staffing, caseload, workload, and service delivery model. There should be one team survey provided per team/service.
The Individual Clinician Survey (right button) is intended for all clinicians and their clinical support assistants to complete individually. Each clinician and support assistant should submit their own survey – one individual survey per person.
Your answers | To help us produce robust and meaningful analysis and recommendations, we would be grateful if you could refer to your service data, rather than relying on memory or estimates.
Every response contributes to the evidence base. By providing accurate, complete and consistent information, you are helping to generate meaningful insights that will inform future workforce planning, service development and the delivery of high-quality care for children and young people.
Please only submit your answers on a desktop or laptop. Neither the surveys nor the website cater to mobile phone entries.
Completeness | Many questions within the survey have intentionally not been marked as mandatory (*). This allows respondents to move through the survey flexibly, completing questions for which information is readily available first if preferred, and return to more detailed sections at a later stage.
Whilst this approach is intended to make survey completion easier, all questions have been included because the information they collect is important to the aims of the ASCEND project. Missing responses can reduce our ability to fully understand variations in service provision, workforce capacity and patient complexity, and may limit the strength of the insights generated from the study, minimising their influence.
We recognise that some of the information requested may not be easily at hand. However, the data that are most challenging to access are often those that reveal important differences between services and contribute most significantly to understanding current practice. We therefore encourage respondents to complete as many questions as possible and to provide the most accurate information available.
Moving back and forth | The survey allows you to move back and forth through the survey, as long as the questions with an asterisk (*) have been completed. As mentioned earlier, these have been minimised to maximise your freedom, comfort and autonomy throughout the survey. You can press the ‘back’ and ‘next’ buttons at the bottom of the survey page to do this.
Support | We are committed to making participation in the ASCEND project as straightforward and supportive as possible. Your feedback is invaluable and helps us continually improve our guidance, resources and website. If you have any questions, experience any difficulties, or have suggestions for improvement, please don’t hesitate to contact the ASCEND team by email or telephone. Please see our Contacts and Update pages.
Saving and returning to your survey
Saving and submitting | Submitting your survey, whether you have completed it or not, will save a copy of your survey and your answers. It will save a copy on your system as well as the ASCEND system. However, this also means that you can reopen your submission and amend or add further answers that overwrite your previous entries and submit it again. This can be helpful if you would prefer to complete the survey in parts, when you can find the time, or if you have some answers at hand and prefer to complete others once you have the information more easily available.
Code name | At the end of the survey, you will be offered to create a code name. This is a back-up measure to enable you to remain anonymous whilst still be able to overwrite/access your survey entries if something goes wrong. In such a case, you need only phone us and tell us your code name and we will help fix the problem. Please use a memorable code word and keep it safe and accessible throughout the project.
Important definitions
Please read these definitions carefully before completing the survey. They are essential for ensuring that all questions are interpreted consistently and that the data collected is accurate and comparable across services.
These definitions are listed in alphabetical order.
Privacy notice
Please read the privacy notice before contributing to the project. It is essential that you are able to agree to this.