What are the best ways to identify and prioritize internal communication research questions?

1 Start with your objectives

Before you dive into the data, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your internal communication research. What are your communication objectives and how do they support your organizational goals and vision? How will you measure your success and progress? What are the key challenges or problems that you want to solve or explore? By defining your objectives, you can narrow down your research scope and focus on the most relevant and impactful questions.

2 Use a framework

A framework can help you structure and organize your research questions and guide your data collection and analysis. The RACE framework, which stands for Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage, is particularly useful for mapping out an internal communication journey. This framework allows you to formulate specific research questions for each stage. For example, when reaching your audience, you can ask how many and which employees you are reaching with your communication channels and content? Are they opening, reading, clicking, or sharing your content? Are they more satisfied, engaged, productive or loyal? Are you listening to and involving your employees in your communication? Are you creating opportunities for dialogue, collaboration, and recognition? These questions can help you increase reach and visibility while demonstrating the value of your communication.

3 Prioritize by impact and feasibility

Once you have a list of potential research questions, it's important to prioritize them by considering impact and feasibility. Impact is a measure of how important or relevant the question is for your objectives and your audience, while feasibility refers to how easy or difficult it is to answer the question with the data and resources available. You can use a simple matrix to plot your questions along these two dimensions and rank them accordingly. For example, questions that are both relevant and easy to answer should be your top priority, while those that are important but challenging to answer should be your second priority. Questions that are less relevant but easy to answer should be your third priority, and those that are not very important and difficult to answer should be your last priority.

4 Review and refine

Finally, you should review and refine your research questions regularly, as your objectives, data, and insights may change over time. You should also seek feedback and input from your stakeholders, such as your leaders, managers, and employees, to ensure that your research questions are aligned with their needs and expectations. By doing so, you can keep your research questions relevant, valid, and useful for your internal communication strategy and practice.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?