Hospice Survey

I’ve taken the Hospice Survey before, has anything changed for this year?

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Birdsong is committed to ensuring that our surveys and reporting services provide charities with the most pertinent data in user-friendly formats.  We carried out a review after the 2024 survey and have subsequently developed a set of enhancements to the Hospice Survey for 2025. 

The changes include two new questions and some updated wording within the main questionnaire, and the order/flow of the questionnaire has been fine-tuned. The changes have been prepared in such a way as to allow for unhindered comparison with previous years.  We have also added features to our multi-category breakdown reporting, updated the optional diversity demographics section and generated a streamlined version of the optional hybrid working section. The 2025 questionnaires are set out in the Guidance Notes available to download from this website (or request for us to send you by email) and/or you can take a trial survey online here.

 

 

What are the dates for the 2025 Hospice Survey?

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The timetable for the 2025 main survey period is as follows:
 

• The Hospice Survey registration period is open from the 7th March and will close on Friday 4th April 2025. During this time – in addition to the information you can find on these FAQ pages – Birdsong’s Hospice Survey Project Lead Emma Howard (emma@birdsong.co.uk) will be on hand to answer any questions or provide any support you might need to register with your chosen options.

• The Hospice Survey itself will be live for five weeks from Tuesday 6th May (after the early May bank holiday) to Friday 6th of June 2025.  We recommend you choose a three week period within these dates to promote the survey to your staff / volunteers.

• Your main survey reports will be sent to you by Friday 11th July 2025 at the latest.

• If you have selected an in-depth Findings Report in addition to your main reports, we will communicate with you at the point of registration regarding the date that this can be completed for you. Diversity and Equality reports, where requested, will also follow on after the main reporting date. 

 

Please note that if you were not able to participate in the collective period, you can take the Hospice Survey on a standalone basis at another time of year.

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What are the questions in the Hospice Survey?

 

You can see the questions for the Hospice Survey by viewing our trial survey. To open the trial survey in a new tab click here.

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Can I modify the survey to include my own questions?

 

You cannot change the wording of the opinion questions in the survey - to facilitate the benchmarking - but we always offer the opportunity to add ‘open questions’ at the end of the survey. You can add up to three questions to your survey selections for a standard extra charge (see our Guidance Notes for information on pricing) and these can be worded in any way that you wish. Open questions can be useful because the narrative responses can provide more detailed information from respondents and also the flexibility on wording the questions can enable you to raise specific topics that are important to your hospice. 

We have example wording available to help you for open questions. These are:

1.    What is the best thing about working for your charity?
2.    If you could change one thing about working for your charity, what would it be?
3.    Do you have any other comments?

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We normally recommend adding up to three open questions but if you do wish to add more let us know as we can give you a quote separately for adding one or two more in addition if needed. 

NB: We do also offer bespoke surveys, starting form a core survey cost of £1,950 +VAT, if you require a specifically tailored approach.  

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How do I include volunteers in my survey?

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We have a version of the Hospice Survey for paid staff only, and one that is more specific to volunteering. The surveys contain enough cross-over to enable effective and meaningful comparison of data if you wish for both your staff and volunteers to take part.

If you would like separate reporting for your Volunteer survey (as opposed to combining your staff and volunteer responses), you should budget for an amount equivalent to your staff survey. There will in fact be a small saving, as we do not charge the full amount for a second Overall Results report (It is £150 + VAT rather than £395 + VAT). Refer to the pricing table in in our Guidance Notes for more information. 

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I’d like my survey results to tell me about how different groups of people are feeling. How do I do this?

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In addition to the Overall Results report that is included in the core price of your survey, you can further sub-analyse your results and customise your survey. The choices you make will depend on the size and structure of your organisation – some smaller organisations will be amply informed by the Overall Results report alone and will not require additional breakdowns. 

A good way to help you choose which reporting options will best suit you is to think about who will use the reports and what areas of decision-making and planning the information could help inform and feed into.  

 

The standard comparison reports available are:

 

• Staff vs volunteers

• Managers vs Non-managers

• Clinical areas vs Non-clinical areas

• Length of service

• Locations    

• Departments

• Previous years 

• Top Performers benchmark (for hospices wanting to challenge themselves a little more) 

These are all listed in the registration form, with click buttons allowing you to indicate whether or not you would like to add each option.

You can also specify a custom sub-analysis that is unique to your hospice. This could be, for example, to analyse the responses from different job types. The registration form will ask you if you require ‘any other sub-analyses’ and give you the chance to input analyses categories that are unique to you.

When considering which groups of people you would like to have in your comparison reports, please do not choose individual categories that are likely to have fewer than 10 respondents as this could compromise the anonymity of responses.

There is a fixed pricing structure for the addition of these reports, based on the number of categories involved in each. Refer to the pricing table in in our Guidance Notes for more information. 

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How much does it cost for my hospice to take part?

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Core cost of the survey: We provide a discount of £150+VAT for all hospices who choose to take the survey during our main Hospice Survey period in May/early June each year. This means that the core cost for taking the survey and receiving an Overall Results report is £395+VAT in the collective period, and £545+VAT at any other time of year. 

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Extra options: If you would like to sub-analyse your survey data (i.e. by department, location, length of service or another category) or if you would like a Findings Report or to add open questions to your survey, the costs are added on to the core cost of the survey report by report. You can see the fixed pricing structure for this in the next FAQ. The choices you make will depend on the size and structure of your organisation – some smaller organisations will be amply informed by the Overall Results report alone and will not require additional breakdowns. 

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Does the cost increase with the numbers of respondents you are asking to take part?

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No, the price remains fixed no matter how many staff or volunteers you are asking to take part. 

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How does the pricing for sub-analyses work?

 

There is a fixed price structure for the survey sub-analysis reports, with various options available at additional cost. Refer to the pricing table in in our Guidance Notes for more information. 

 

The registration process guides you through the available selections and indicates prices for each option as you go through the online form. The same price structure applies to both staff and volunteer surveys. The costs do not increase with the numbers of respondents that take part. 

All the costs detailed exclude VAT, which is charged at the standard rate of 20%.
 

Does the Hospice Survey cover any questions about hybrid working?

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Responding to our charity clients’ changing needs at various points since 2020, Birdsong developed a set of 20 survey questions (which some charities chose to add to the main Hospice Survey survey) to help gauge how staff were navigating hybrid working. Based on our 2024 review, we have now substantially shortened this set of questions for 2025 onwards. The streamlined set of ten* hybrid working questions for 2025 is set out in the Guidance Notes and it will cost just £100+VAT if you would like to add this to the main survey. 

When considering whether or not you want to add the hybrid working section, please bear in mind that you can opt to compare your whole staff survey results by working arrangement too/instead, so this could negate the need to ask further hybrid working specific questions, especially if they are not relevant to all your staff.
 

*If you used the longer previous version of 20 hybrid working questions in 2023 or 2024 and would still like to use this in full again for 2025, please let us know in the ‘anything else we should know’ box at the end of the registration form and we can follow up with you to discuss how best to meet your needs. Please note that this would be at the previous price of £215+VAT.

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I want to use the survey to also gather diversity information at my organisation, can I do this?

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Yes, we can add an extra section to your survey if you would like to gather non-compulsory and anonymous information from your staff and/or volunteers about their age, disability status, ethnicity, gender, religion and/or belief and their sexual orientation. We have added an option on the registration form where you can select to add our set of diversity questions to the end of your survey to receive a standalone equality and diversity report. The report includes UK 2021 Census data as a comparator – staff demographics are not linked to the survey’s opinion data. If you require any additional analysis (i.e. opinion data compared by diversity categories) this will be quoted for separately. The base cost for this service is £335+VAT.

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Even though anonymity is guaranteed for individuals through Birdsong surveys, demographic information is personal, and can feel sensitive, and people may not feel comfortable sharing it. Please view this document about Birdsong’s approach to Diversity Demographics, and consider the advice it contains around choosing whether or not to add this element to your survey.

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Will I be able to add additional reports at a later stage? 

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Please do always contact us to ask us if there is more information you’d like that you didn’t select at the point of registration. We would be able to produce Previous Years Comparison reports at any later stage, as well as separate staff vs volunteer comparisons, if you have had both groups taking the survey. 

However, for most sub-analyses options, if you did not select it at the point of registration we cannot add it as a further breakdown category afterwards as we will not have the necessary respondent information available to us. Therefore please make us aware at the point of registration and/or testing if you think there might be an area you’d like the flexibility of adding at a later point.
 

Some of our staff/volunteers do not have access to the internet – how can they take the survey?

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Birdsong can provide a PDF file for printing a hard copy of the questionnaire at your site if your organisation requires this. You will be able to select this as an option during your registration process. You can find more information about utilising paper copies of the Hospice Survey in the next FAQ question. 

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How does the data capture for paper versions of the survey work? Do I need this option?

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Two options are available to hospices using paper versions of the survey questionnaire in addition to the online survey.

You can enter the data yourself manually within your organisation via an online Data Capture link provided to you by Birdsong. To do this, there is a flat fee of £75+VAT for us to produce a PDF copy of the questionnaire for you to use to hand out to your teams. Please carefully consider the confidentiality implications involved if you choose this option.

Alternatively, completed paper surveys can be sent to Birdsong for us to carry out the data capture on behalf of your hospice. The price for this is the same £75+VAT fee for producing the PDF copy (as above) plus £3.25 +VAT for each questionnaire that we receive back by post to enter into your survey. 
You can select either of these options when registering for your survey.

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If you have any further questions about your Hospice Survey, please do make contact with us via emma@birdsong.co.uk or by calling 01858 525258.

To return to the Hospice Survey page, where you can find other FAQs or register your hospice for the Hospice Survey, please click here.

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