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Why listen to the people whose experiences and behaviors matter?
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Who are the people you need to listen to?
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How do you reach and invite people to participate?
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How do you listen and conduct formative research?
Imagine that a community environmental coalition launches a campaign to reduce fossil-fuel use and improve access to cleaner transportation and energy. The coalition creates attractive advertisements about public transportation, walking, bicycling, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.
Months later, however, little has changed.
One reason may be that the coalition designed the campaign before understanding the experiences of the people whose decisions and daily lives were involved. Some residents may not have reliable public transportation. Others may have disabilities, caregiving responsibilities, long commutes, jobs that require a vehicle, concerns about cost, or housing situations in which they cannot make energy upgrades themselves.
Some proposed changes may also depend less on individual behavior than on decisions by transportation agencies, employers, landlords, utilities, developers, or policymakers.
The lesson is not simply that the coalition chose the wrong advertisements. It is that effective social marketing begins with listening.
Social marketing is more than telling people what an organization wants them to do. It requires understanding people's experiences, goals, motivations, barriers, environments, competing priorities, and ideas about what would make beneficial behavior realistic.
Why listen to the people whose experiences and behaviors matter?
The first reason is respect.
Professional expertise, research evidence, or organizational experience may provide important information, but they do not give an organization complete knowledge of how other people experience an issue or what they value.
People affected by an issue hold knowledge that professionals may not have: knowledge about daily routines, relationships, barriers, community history, trust, culture, safety, stigma, resources, and the consequences of proposed changes.
Listening helps avoid designing programs around assumptions.
The second reason is effectiveness. Strategies are more likely to be useful when they reflect the realities of the people expected to use a service, adopt a behavior, support a policy, or participate in an initiative.
Formative research can help you understand:
- What people already know
- What matters to them
- What benefits they value
- What barriers they experience
- What alternatives or competing priorities exist
- Whom they trust
- What services or supports they need
- What communication channels they use
- What unintended consequences a proposed strategy might create
Listening should not be treated simply as a technique for discovering the right words to persuade people. Community input may show that your proposed solution is incomplete, inaccessible, or inappropriate. It may reveal that your organization, another institution, or a policy needs to change rather than the people you originally expected to influence.
Commercial marketers also use research to understand customers, test ideas, and improve products. Social marketing can use similar research methods, but it carries additional responsibilities because campaigns may involve health, safety, stigma, public policy, inequality, or other matters with significant consequences for people's lives.
For that reason, listening should be grounded in respect, transparency, ethical practice, and meaningful participation.
Who are the people you need to listen to?
Begin with people who are directly affected by the issue or whose behaviors and decisions are relevant to the outcome. Then consider the people, organizations, and systems that influence their choices or control important conditions.
For example, a community effort to prevent youth violence might listen to:
- Young people who have experienced violence, caused harm, witnessed violence, or been involved in prevention efforts
- Parents, caregivers, family members, peers, and other trusted adults
- Residents of neighborhoods affected by violence
- Teachers, school staff, counselors, youth workers, coaches, mentors, and community health workers
- Health care and emergency-response professionals
- Violence-prevention and survivor-support organizations
- Faith and spiritual community leaders
- Law-enforcement, probation, court, or restorative-justice representatives where relevant
- Employers, housing organizations, transportation providers, or other institutions connected to underlying conditions
- Elected officials and policymakers
The goal is not to label one group as "the problem." Violence and many other community issues emerge from interactions among individual experiences, relationships, institutions, environmental conditions, policies, and broader social and economic factors.
Use existing knowledge carefully
Your organization may already know important things about the community. That knowledge can help identify people to involve and questions to explore.
However, do not turn general impressions into assumptions about entire groups.
A neighborhood's race, ethnicity, income, religion, immigration history, disability prevalence, or other demographic characteristics should not by themselves be used to predict people's beliefs, motivations, health behaviors, or willingness to participate.
When disparities exist, examine the conditions associated with them rather than implying that group identity itself causes the outcome.
For example, people may experience different health outcomes because of differences in health care access, environmental exposure, discrimination, housing, employment, transportation, food access, insurance, or other conditions. Understanding these pathways is more useful than relying on broad demographic generalizations.
Use current and appropriate secondary data
Existing data can help identify community conditions and possible audiences.
Sources may include:
- U.S. Census Bureau and American Community Survey data
- Federal, state, tribal, territorial, and local public-health data
- Labor, housing, education, transportation, environmental, and economic data
- Peer-reviewed research
- Community health and needs assessments
- Public agency reports and meeting records
- Aggregated organizational or program data that may appropriately be used for planning
- Community-generated research and assessments
Use current sources whenever possible and consider how data were collected, whose experiences may be missing, and whether categories or measures accurately represent the community.
Do not assume that access to a dataset means every use of that information is appropriate. Protect privacy, follow applicable law and organizational policy, and avoid using identifiable information for outreach or marketing without a legitimate basis.
Learn from community knowledge
Residents, participants, community leaders, advocates, service providers, businesses, schools, cultural organizations, and other community partners may hold information that formal datasets do not capture.
Community knowledge can help you identify:
- Historical experiences that affect trust
- Emerging issues that are not yet visible in formal datasets
- Services that people find useful or inaccessible
- Informal community networks
- Trusted messengers and institutions
- Local strengths and assets
- Conflicts or concerns that could affect implementation
Look beyond the people expected to change an individual behavior
Some of the most important audiences may be people or institutions whose actions shape the environment in which individual decisions occur.
These might include:
- Employers whose schedules affect access to services
- Landlords or property owners who control housing conditions
- Health care organizations whose policies affect access
- Businesses whose products or practices influence behavior
- School systems
- Transportation agencies
- Media organizations
- Policymakers
- Organizations that control funding or other resources
Ask who has the ability to remove barriers, create opportunities, or change the conditions surrounding the issue.
Decide whose perspectives you need
You may not have the resources to engage every possible audience equally. Prioritize based on the purpose of the research and the decisions that need to be made.
Consider:
- Who is most directly affected?
- Who experiences the greatest barriers or inequities?
- Whose perspectives have historically been missing from decision-making?
- Who controls important services, policies, resources, or environmental conditions?
- Who can provide relevant knowledge about implementation?
- Are there important differences in behavior, experience, access, or motivation that require listening to several audience segments?
When seeking community-wide input, do not assume that one classroom, workplace, congregation, neighborhood association, or community organization represents an entire community. Use several sources and actively look for perspectives that may otherwise be overlooked.
How do you reach and invite people to participate?
Once you identify the people you need to hear from, plan outreach that is accessible, respectful, and appropriate to the community.
Communicate in accessible languages and formats
Use the languages people prefer and formats they can access. Depending on the audience, this may require:
- Translation and interpretation
- Plain-language materials
- Large print
- Captions or transcripts
- Screen-reader-compatible digital materials
- Audio or video formats
- Accessible meeting locations
- Phone, text, online, or in-person participation options
Do not assume that English proficiency, literacy, disability, or access to technology is the same throughout an audience segment.
Use communication channels people actually use
Outreach may occur through:
- Community organizations
- Schools and libraries
- Health care and human service organizations
- Faith and spiritual communities
- Cultural organizations
- Disability organizations
- Workplaces
- Community events
- Text or messaging platforms
- Websites and social media
- Print materials
- Community radio, newspapers, or other local media
- Trusted interpersonal networks
CDC communication guidance recommends identifying intended audiences, conducting audience research rather than guessing or assuming, choosing formats and channels based on how audiences actually receive information, and building in time for pretesting.
Respect community schedules, customs, and responsibilities
Ask when and where participation is convenient rather than assuming one meeting time or location will work.
Consider:
- Work schedules
- School schedules
- Religious or cultural observances
- Caregiving responsibilities
- Transportation
- Disability access
- Digital access
- Safety
Work with trusted community partners
Trusted community organizations and leaders may help introduce the project, explain its purpose, identify gaps in outreach, and advise on respectful engagement.
Do not use trusted intermediaries simply to increase compliance with your request. Their role can also include challenging the research design, advising against inappropriate outreach, or helping the organization better understand community concerns.
Be clear about why you are asking
Tell people:
- Why you want their input
- How the information will be used
- Whether participation is voluntary
- What information will be recorded
- How privacy and confidentiality will be handled
- Whether results may be shared publicly
- Whether compensation or participant support is available
- How they can ask questions or raise concerns
People should not be told that their input will shape a decision if the organization has no intention or authority to use it. Be honest about what can and cannot change.
Consider compensation and participation supports
Community members are contributing time and expertise. When resources allow and compensation is appropriate, consider honoraria, stipends, gift cards, meals, transportation, childcare or dependent-care support, interpretation, or other assistance that reduces the burden of participation.
Compensation should recognize people's contributions without creating inappropriate pressure to participate.
How do you listen and conduct formative research?
Formative research helps you understand how people experience an issue and how they may respond to different strategies.
It can be quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method.
Quantitative approaches can help identify patterns and estimate how common certain responses are. Qualitative approaches can provide deeper understanding of experiences, motivations, language, context, and meaning. Neither is automatically better; choose methods based on the decisions you need to make.
Distinguish community listening from formal research
A listening session conducted to improve a local program is not necessarily the same thing as human-subjects research. Requirements depend on the purpose, design, funding, institution, intended use of the findings, and applicable law and policy.
If your activity may constitute human-subjects research, determine whether institutional review board or other ethics review is required before beginning.
When federal human-subjects protections apply, informed consent generally requires appropriate disclosure, understanding, and voluntary participation unless an applicable regulatory exception or approved waiver applies.
Even when formal research regulations do not apply, good community-engagement practice still supports transparency, voluntariness, privacy, appropriate data protection, accessibility, and respect.
Use existing or secondary information
Secondary data can provide useful context before collecting new information.
Examples include:
- Census and demographic data
- Health surveillance data
- Environmental data
- Service-use data
- Existing surveys
- Published research
- Community assessments
- Public policy and administrative information
Avoid drawing strong conclusions about people's beliefs or motivations from indirect indicators alone.
For example, a high rate of bicycle ownership does not necessarily show that a community strongly values physical fitness. Bicycles may be used for transportation, recreation, employment, affordability, or many other reasons. Use secondary data to develop questions, not stereotypes.
Observation and ethnographic methods
Observation can help researchers understand environments, routines, interactions, service settings, and other contextual factors.
Observation may be structured or more ethnographic and may involve greater or lesser participation by the researcher.
Before conducting observation, consider:
- Whether observation is appropriate to the setting
- Whether people reasonably expect privacy
- Whether consent or notice is required
- Whether children or other populations requiring additional safeguards are involved
- Whether photographs, audio, or video are truly necessary
- How recordings and notes will be protected
- Whether the researcher's presence may influence what occurs
- Whether observation could stigmatize or place participants at risk
Do not assume that being in a public place automatically makes covert observation or recording appropriate.
Community members and staff who already spend time in a setting may provide valuable contextual knowledge, but that knowledge should not be treated as unrestricted permission to document other people's private or sensitive experiences.
Conduct in-depth interviews
In-depth interviews are individual conversations designed to explore experiences, motivations, barriers, decisions, and ideas in detail.
They can be particularly useful when:
- The issue is sensitive
- Privacy is important
- People's experiences vary substantially
- You need to understand how and why decisions occur
- Group discussion might discourage candid participation
Interviews may take place in person, by phone, by video, or through another accessible format. Participants should understand the purpose of the conversation, what will happen with their information, and whether the session will be recorded.
Convene focus groups or listening sessions
Focus groups bring together a small number of people to discuss an issue under the guidance of a facilitator.
Groups may be organized around a meaningful shared characteristic or experience when doing so helps people speak comfortably or enables useful comparison.
Relevant characteristics might include:
- Experience with a service or behavior
- Geographic context
- Language preference
- Age or life stage
- Disability or accessibility experience
- Role in an organization or community
- Other characteristics directly relevant to the research question
Demographic similarity is not automatically necessary. Design the group around the question you need to answer and the conditions most likely to support meaningful participation.
Facilitators should explain the purpose of the discussion honestly. Do not intentionally hide material information simply because you believe participants will provide "better" answers if they do not understand what is being studied.
For sensitive discussions, explain the limits of confidentiality. Researchers can ask participants not to repeat what others say, but they generally cannot guarantee that every participant will maintain confidentiality after leaving the group.
If audio or video recording is planned, explain that clearly and obtain appropriate permission.
Existing groups can sometimes participate in listening sessions, but consider how existing relationships, authority, supervision, or power differences could affect what people are willing to say.
Conduct surveys
Surveys can gather information from larger numbers of people and can include closed-ended and open-ended questions.
Surveys may be delivered:
- Online
- By phone
- Through text messaging
- By mail
- In person
- Through community organizations or service settings
- Through another accessible method appropriate to the audience
Survey quality depends on more than the number of responses.
Consider:
- How participants were selected
- Who had an opportunity to respond
- Who may have been excluded
- Nonresponse
- Question wording
- Language and accessibility
- Whether the sample supports the conclusions you want to make
- Privacy and confidentiality
A convenience survey may still provide useful information, but be transparent about its limitations and avoid presenting it as representative of an entire community when it is not.
Decide what you need to learn
A useful way to develop research questions is to begin with the decisions you expect the findings to inform.
Ask:
- What decision will this information help us make?
- Who will make that decision?
- How will community members or participants contribute to interpreting the findings?
- What information is actually necessary?
- Are we collecting sensitive information that we do not need?
- How will we use the information after it is collected?
Possible decisions might include:
- Whether a social marketing approach is appropriate
- Which behavior to prioritize
- Whether institutional or policy change is needed alongside individual behavior change
- Which audiences or partners should be involved
- Which barriers should be addressed first
- What services or supports should change
- Which benefits or outcomes matter most to intended audiences
- Which communication approaches are likely to be accessible and trusted
Identify the information needed for those decisions
Depending on your purpose, you may need to understand:
- What decisions people face when considering the behavior
- What information they already have and what information they want
- What people, organizations, experiences, or conditions influence their decisions
- What barriers affect their ability to act
- What benefits they value
- What competing behaviors or priorities exist
- How ready or able they are to act under current conditions
- What services or supports would make action easier
- Which communication sources they trust
- Which communication formats they use
- What concerns they have about the proposed strategy
Social marketing benchmark guidance similarly emphasizes behavior, audience orientation, theory, insight, exchange, competition, segmentation, and a mix of methods rather than communication alone.
Choose an appropriate level of analysis
Research does not need to be large or expensive to be useful, but the strength of your conclusions should match the strength of your methods.
A small organization may use several listening sessions and interviews to understand likely barriers and improve a local program. It should not present those conversations as statistically representative of an entire county or population.
When quantitative conclusions are important, seek appropriate statistical expertise. Universities, public-health departments, evaluation partners, nonprofit technical-assistance organizations, consultants, and community research partners may be able to help.
Do not rely on intuition alone when an important decision requires reliable evidence. At the same time, do not dismiss community knowledge simply because it is qualitative.
Develop respectful questions
Questions may be:
- Direct: "What makes it easier or harder for you to attend this program?"
- Exploratory: "Tell me about the last time you tried to use this service."
- Follow-up or probing: "You mentioned transportation. Can you tell me more about how that affects you?"
- Rating questions: "How important is cost when deciding whether to use this service?"
- Hypothetical: "If evening appointments were available, would that change how likely you would be to use the service? Why or why not?"
- Comparative: "Which of these two approaches would be more useful to you, and what makes you prefer it?"
Avoid assuming that indirect or deceptive questions automatically produce more truthful answers. People may answer differently for many reasons, including uncertainty, memory limitations, social expectations, privacy concerns, misunderstanding, or changes in circumstances.
Good facilitation creates enough trust and clarity for people to explain their experiences without feeling judged.
Ask about decisions and barriers
A behavior that appears simple from the organization's perspective may require several decisions or tradeoffs for participants.
Someone considering a program might need to think about:
- Work schedules
- Transportation
- Childcare or dependent care
- Cost
- Privacy
- Safety
- Stigma
- Disability access
- Family responsibilities
- Previous experiences with similar services
Questions such as "What would make this difficult?" and "What would make this easier?" often reveal more useful information than simply asking whether someone intends to participate.
Ask what information people need
Find out what people already understand, what remains unclear, and what information would actually support a decision.
Avoid framing lack of information as ignorance or personal failure. People may not have received accessible, trustworthy, culturally relevant, or timely information.
Ask who and what influences decisions
Influence may come from:
- Family and friends
- Peers
- Community leaders
- Health professionals
- Teachers
- Faith and spiritual leaders
- Employers
- Community organizations
- Online communities
- News and entertainment media
- Social media
- Policies and institutional practices
Do not assume which messenger people trust. Ask.
Test different messages and approaches
Participants can review draft messages, images, services, incentives, websites, enrollment processes, or other parts of an intervention.
Ask:
- What do you think this means?
- What stands out?
- Is anything confusing?
- Is anything inaccurate or unrealistic?
- Does anything feel stigmatizing, judgmental, or disrespectful?
- What information is missing?
- Would this help you make a decision or take action?
- What would make it more useful?
CDC recommends building time and resources into communication development for pretesting with intended audiences and revising materials based on what is learned.
Understand readiness without assuming a single linear pathway
People may differ in their knowledge, priorities, confidence, opportunity, intention, and ability to act.
Useful questions might explore:
- What people know about the issue
- Whether the issue matters to them
- Whether they are considering the behavior
- Whether they believe the behavior is realistic under current conditions
- Whether they have attempted it previously
- What would support initiation or continuation
Behavioral theories and stages-of-change models can help organize thinking, but avoid assuming that everyone progresses through the same sequence or that lack of action necessarily means lack of motivation. A person may be highly motivated and still face barriers that make action impossible.
Understand costs, benefits, and exchange
Behavior change can involve financial, practical, emotional, social, and physical costs.
Examples may include:
- Paying for services
- Traveling to appointments
- Losing work time
- Arranging childcare or dependent care
- Giving up convenience
- Experiencing withdrawal from nicotine or another substance
- Losing social connection associated with an existing behavior
- Concern about stigma or disclosure
- Physical discomfort
Ask what people consider an ideal or meaningful outcome and what supports would reduce burdens.
Do not assume that individuals should accept substantial personal costs simply because professionals consider the behavior beneficial. The intervention itself may need to change.
Ask which communication channels people actually use
Communication habits change quickly, so do not rely on assumptions about television, newspapers, radio, or social media.
Ask where people currently obtain:
- Health information
- Community news
- Service information
- Recommendations
- Information they trust enough to act on
Different audiences may use different combinations of interpersonal, digital, community, and traditional media.
Analyze, interpret, and return what you learn
After gathering information, analyze it systematically and document important limitations.
Whenever possible, involve community members or participants in interpreting findings. Researchers and organizations may interpret comments differently from the people who provided them.
Ask:
- What patterns appear?
- What important differences exist?
- Whose perspectives may be missing?
- Are there explanations other than the one we first assumed?
- What findings require a change in our original strategy?
- What should not be generalized beyond the participants involved?
When appropriate, share findings back with participants and community partners in an accessible format and explain how their input affected the strategy.
Listening should create a feedback loop rather than function as a one-time extraction of information.
In Summary
Effective social marketing begins by listening to the people whose experiences, decisions, and behaviors are connected to the issue. It also requires listening to the people and institutions that shape the conditions in which those decisions occur.
Formative research can include secondary data, interviews, focus groups, listening sessions, surveys, observation, community-engaged research, and other methods. Choose methods according to the questions you need to answer, the community context, available resources, and the level of confidence needed for the decisions being made.
Listening should be ethical, accessible, transparent, and respectful. Protect privacy, avoid unnecessary collection of sensitive information, use appropriate consent and research oversight where required, compensate community expertise when appropriate, and avoid stereotypes or assumptions about demographic groups.
Most importantly, listening should be capable of changing your plan. If community members tell you that the real barrier is transportation, discrimination, unaffordable services, inconvenient hours, unsafe conditions, or an organizational policy, the answer is not necessarily a more persuasive message. The better social marketing strategy may be to change the service, system, policy, or environment.