Vote now: What should 38 Degrees do next?

What do you think we should do together in the coming months? Over the past few weeks, thousands of us have suggested issues where 38 Degrees members could make a difference by working side by side. Now we need to pick which ones we should work on. Please take a minute to vote on this simple form now.

38 Degrees members throughout the UK have been sharing and discussing ideas for future campaigns. Volunteers in the office have read and analysed all the suggestions and come up with a shortlist. That’s what thousands of 38 Degress members are voting on this week.

How did we come up with the shortlist?

Step 1: The big sift
Thousands of suggestions were submitted on this blog, through Facebook and through the ideas pages of the website. The first job was to sift through all of the comments and suggestions and pull out the ideas.

Step 2: Simple visualisations
Next, some visualisation tools were used so that a picture of what 38 Degrees members wanted to do next started to emerge. The image below is just one view that illustrates what the initial analysis looked like (this visualisation was created using comments from the blog).

Pic: Visual analysis of some of the thousands of suggestions

One of the jobs done at this stage was adding together small piles of similar suggestions. In the example above you can see “Stop Incineration” and “Against incinerators” appear separately but are most likely similar issues.

Step 3: Identifying the top ideas
A further sweep of the data started to reveal some real trends. Reform of the banking system was a priority for members, as was continuing work on the NHS and working to stop cuts to the disability living allowance.

Chart 1: unique campaign ideas

That big green chunk (46.7%) in the graph above  is “other” campaign suggestions. There were a lot of them.

Here are just a few of the comments that came in on the more popular issues:

Diana: “tackling the obscene salaries and profits and tax dodges of big business”

Sarah: “Stop the unfair hatchet job on disability and incapacity benefits.”

Adam: “I’d focus on stopping the NHS reforms first and foremost.”

Matthew: “Campaign to stop the process of fracking. It’s a dangerous and harmful procedure and should be banned.”

Step 4: Campaign types

As a further analysis task, a typology of suggested ideas was also created and visualised (see the pie chart below). In other words, what categories did the suggested ideas fit into. The results can be seen below and show just what a wide range of interests 38 Degrees members have.

Chart 2: types of campaigns suggested

We can’t do everything – we make a difference, and win, because we focus on the big issues we all care about. This poll will help set the direction over the next few months. It will tell the office team where to focus their time researching campaign ideas and opportunities.

Vote now on the simple form – it only takes two minutes.