Senior Management
Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Doorstep engagement provides a direct and effective way for councils, housing providers, utilities, charities and other public service organisations to reach people in their own communities.
A well-designed doorstep engagement programme can do more than distribute information. It can help organisations understand why people are not using a service, address practical barriers, provide tailored support and encourage lasting behaviour change.
M·E·L Research designs and delivers targeted, evidence-led doorstep engagement programmes across urban, suburban and rural communities. Our experienced fieldwork teams combine high-quality face-to-face engagement with robust data collection, behavioural insight and practical operational support.
Our approach can be used to support:
Doorstep engagement, sometimes described as door-to-door engagement or door-knocking, involves trained fieldworkers visiting residents at their homes to provide information, ask questions, identify barriers and encourage a specific action.
Unlike leaflets, letters or digital communications, doorstep engagement creates an opportunity for a two-way conversation. Residents can ask questions, explain their circumstances and receive advice that is relevant to them.
This is particularly valuable where organisations need to reach people who may not engage through online channels, attend consultation events or respond to surveys.
Effective doorstep engagement can help organisations:
Every programme is designed around the organisation’s objectives, target audiences, geography and operational requirements.
Our approach typically includes:
We work with clients to identify priority locations, households or population groups. This may involve using service data, administrative records, geographic information, participation data or other operational intelligence.
Address lists can be organised into efficient fieldwork assignments, with activity prioritised according to need, opportunity or service performance.
We have extensive experience recruiting, training and managing fieldwork teams for large-scale public and social doorstepping programmes.
Fieldworkers can be trained in:
Training can include role-play, practical exercises and site visits to ensure fieldworkers understand both the resident experience and the operational context.
Our doorstep engagement programmes can incorporate established behavioural science frameworks, including the COM-B model.
COM-B considers whether people have the:
This helps fieldworkers move beyond simply giving residents information. Conversations can explore what is preventing participation and identify the most appropriate response.
For example, a resident may lack the necessary equipment, misunderstand the service, have limited physical capacity, lack confidence or feel that the requested action is inconvenient. Each barrier requires a different intervention.
Fieldwork schedules can include daytime, evening and weekend visits to maximise the likelihood of reaching residents.
Where appropriate, programmes can also include:
Fieldworkers use secure tablet-based systems to record the outcome of each visit.
Depending on the programme, this can include:
This gives clients a detailed and timely picture of what is happening on the ground.
Public services often rely on residents understanding information and acting on it. However, awareness does not always translate into behaviour.
People may be unable or unwilling to participate because of practical barriers, competing pressures, limited confidence, misunderstanding or previous experiences of a service.
Doorstep engagement allows these issues to be identified and addressed at an individual level.
It can be particularly effective where:
It also allows an organisation to show that it is willing to listen, respond and work with residents rather than simply communicate at them.
Doorstep engagement can support environmental messaging around food waste collection, contamination reduction, recycling participation, service changes, bin distribution and waste reduction campaigns.
Housing providers can use doorstep engagement to communicate with tenants, understand service needs, promote repairs reporting, address tenancy issues and gather feedback from residents who may not participate through other channels.
Direct engagement can support vaccination campaigns, screening awareness, healthy lifestyle initiatives, smoking cessation, mental health support and access to local services.
Programmes can promote energy efficiency, smart meter uptake, home improvement schemes, fuel poverty support and low-carbon behaviours.
Doorstep engagement can help raise awareness of scams, antisocial behaviour reporting, domestic safety, fire prevention and local support services.
Door-to-door fieldwork can provide a structured way to gather views from residents, particularly in neighbourhoods or communities that are often underrepresented in consultation exercises.
Our fieldwork is supported by experienced researchers and project managers who understand the practical, ethical and analytical requirements of engaging residents in their homes.
This means we can help clients deliver immediate engagement activity while also generating evidence about what works, where barriers remain and how services can improve.
A successful doorstep engagement programme requires more than a team of people knocking on doors.
It requires clear objectives, appropriate targeting, trained and supported fieldworkers, strong safety procedures, reliable data collection and close communication between the engagement team and the organisation commissioning the work.
M·E·L Research can help you design and deliver a programme that reaches the right residents, supports meaningful conversations and produces useful evidence for service improvement.
Contact M·E·L Research to discuss doorstep engagement, door-to-door research, resident engagement or behaviour change fieldwork.
Services
Doorstep engagement provides a direct and effective way for councils, housing providers, utilities, charities and other public service organisations to reach people in their own communities. A well-designed doorstep engagement programme can do more than distribute information. It can help organisations understand why people are not using a service, address practical barriers, provide tailored support and encourage lasting behaviour change.
Services
In order to maximise the impact of campaign investment M.E.L Research can test early creative ideas, through to final copies of creative. We can offer feedback on all types of creative including TV, posters, press, online, social media and radio. This can be done using various methodologies depending on the type of feedback needed, and the type of creative.
Services
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Services
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Services
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Services
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Services
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Services
We have over 35 years’ experience in running quantitative research studies for a range of public services clients; from residents consultations to health and well-being studies to Survey of Tenants And Residents (STAR) projects amongst others.
