Association leaders invest significant time and budget in member research. Surveys are carefully designed. Response incentives are offered. Multiple reminders are sent. The survey closes, results are compiled, and a comprehensive report is delivered.
The report shows satisfaction scores, Net Promoter Scores, and rankings of member priorities. "Networking opportunities" ranks as the top member priority. Professional development comes in second. The data looks solid. The presentation to the board goes well.
Then comes the harder question: what do we do with this information?
If members say networking is their top priority, what specific kind of networking do they need? For what purpose? Which member segments are we talking about? What would success look like? The survey data doesn't answer these questions. It identifies what might matter, but not how to act on it.
This gap between data and decisions is why many association leaders find themselves conducting research that doesn't fundamentally change their strategy. The information exists, but the path from insight to action remains unclear.
Here are three reasons why traditional member surveys often fail to drive meaningful strategic decisions, and what associations can do differently.
1. Surveys Measure Opinions, Not the Behaviors Behind Member Needs
Survey Opinions Miss the Real Needs Behind Member Behavior
Traditional member surveys ask members what they think. What do you value most about your membership? How satisfied are you with our programs? What should we prioritize next year? These are opinion questions, and they produce opinion data.
The challenge is that opinions don't usually align with actual behavior. More importantly, opinions don't reveal the underlying needs, motivations, and contexts that drive why members make the choices they do.
For example an association surveys members about professional development priorities. The results show that "advanced technical training" ranks highly. Leadership reviews the finding and asks: what kind of technical training? The survey doesn't say. They could guess based on industry trends, but that's still guessing.
Here's what the survey data doesn't tell you: What are members actually trying to accomplish in their careers right now? How are they currently solving their learning needs? What have they tried that didn't work? What barriers prevent them from pursuing development opportunities they know they need? Are early-career members trying to build foundational skills while senior members need specialized updates on regulatory changes?
These aren't opinion questions. They're behavioral questions that require understanding the lived experience of members. When you ask "what do you value most?" you get a ranking. When you ask "walk me through how you approached your last professional development decision," you get context, motivation, and real constraints that shape behavior.
The gap this creates: Associations build programs based on what members say matters, then wonder why adoption doesn't match stated interest. A certification program that members said they wanted sits underutilized. An event format that surveyed well has disappointing attendance. The gap between opinion and behavior shows up after investment, not before.
A different approach: Research that asks members to describe their actual experiences rather than state their preferences. Instead of "rate the importance of networking," the question becomes "tell me about the last time you needed professional advice. What did you do? Who did you reach out to? What made that helpful or not helpful?"
These conversations might reveal that early-career members need structured guidance on navigating career transitions, but they're often overwhelmed and need programs that don't require additional time outside of work hours. They value structure but also need the flexibility to opt out when other demands stretch them too thin. Established professionals, on the other hand, want efficient access to peers facing similar practice management challenges, preferring informal touchpoints they can engage with on their own schedule.Both might check "networking" on a survey, but their actual needs require completely different solutions.
This is behavioral research: asking what people have done and what they do, understanding their real needs in the context of their actual lives and careers, then using that understanding to inform what associations build. The focus isn't on what members think about the association. It's on understanding what members are trying to accomplish and how they're currently solving (or not solving) those needs.
2. Surveys Don't Reveal Why Your Least Engaged Members Aren't Engaging
Why Satisfaction Doesn't Predict Behavior
Here's a challenge with most member research: the members who respond to surveys tend to be the ones already engaged with your association. They open your emails. They attend your events. They have opinions about your programs because they use your programs.
The members you most need to understand are often the ones who don't complete your survey. Early-career professionals who joined but never really engaged. Long-time members whose participation has steadily declined. Potential members who looked at membership and decided against it.
If you only research the members who respond to surveys, you're primarily learning about members who are already connected to what you offer. That creates a significant blind spot in understanding why broader engagement remains low or why certain segments never develop attachment to the association.
Consider an association concerned about declining engagement among members in solo practice. The annual survey goes out. Solo practitioners respond at lower rates than other segments. The limited responses they do provide show moderate satisfaction scores, but nothing that clearly explains the engagement gap.
What the survey can't tell you: Why are solo practitioners not participating? Is it that they don't see value, or that they don't have time? Are the programs genuinely not relevant, or are they scheduled at times that don't work for independent practitioners? Have they tried to engage and encountered barriers that made them stop trying? Are they solving their professional needs through other channels that better fit their reality?
You can't answer these questions with engagement data from your association management system, because that data only shows you who IS engaging. It doesn't explain the lived experience of the people who aren't.
The limitation this creates: Strategy gets built on feedback from the already-engaged. The association optimizes programs for the 30% who actively participate while the 70% who rarely engage remain a mystery. Attempts to increase engagement across dormant segments are based on assumptions rather than understanding.
A different approach: Direct conversations with the members who aren't showing up in your data. Reach out specifically to solo practitioners who joined but never attended an event. Ask them to walk through their typical week and where professional development fits (or doesn't fit). Understand what they've tried and what stopped working. Learn how they're currently solving the needs your association aims to serve.
These conversations often reveal that the barrier isn't relevance but logistics. Or that the relevance problem is more specific than surveys suggest: not that content isn't valuable, but that it's packaged in formats that don't fit certain members' professional realities. Or that competitors or informal networks are serving needs in ways your programs don't.
When you understand the actual behavior and constraints of less-engaged members, you can design different solutions rather than just trying harder with the same approach.
This is particularly critical for understanding early-career professionals, who often have the lowest engagement rates across associations. Survey data shows they're dissatisfied or disengaged. Behavioral research reveals why: they're overwhelmed, time-constrained, and often don't yet understand how to extract value from membership because no one has shown them.
3. Annual Research Cycles Can't Support Year-Round Strategic Needs
Your Strategy Needs Research More Than Once a Year
Most associations conduct comprehensive member research annually or every other year. This provides valuable baseline data and tracks trends over time. The limitation emerges when strategic questions arise outside that research cycle.
Leadership considers launching a new certification program mid-year. The membership team notices concerning patterns in a specific demographic and needs to understand what's driving the trend. A proposed dues structure change requires validation before board approval. The education team is developing a new format and wants to test the concept before significant investment.
Each of these represents a legitimate need for member insight to inform an important decision. Under a traditional research model, each would require commissioning a separate research project at separate cost. Given that focused research projects represent significant investment, most associations can't justify that expense multiple times per year for emerging strategic questions.
So decisions get made with incomplete information. Leadership does their best with available data, but critical questions about member needs, likely adoption, or potential barriers go unanswered because the cost and timeline of spinning up research doesn't fit the decision timeline.
The constraint this creates: Research becomes something associations do annually to establish baselines rather than an ongoing capability that actively shapes decisions throughout the business cycle. Strategic opportunities get evaluated based on assumptions rather than actual member insight because research isn't accessible when questions arise.
A different approach: Structure research as an ongoing capability rather than an annual event. This might look like a comprehensive annual survey combined with quarterly research capacity that deploys when strategic questions emerge.
For example, an association completes their annual member survey in Q1. The survey reveals that members in private practice settings show significantly lower satisfaction than those in institutional settings. Rather than waiting until next year's survey to investigate further, the association deploys a focused research pulse in Q2: 5-6 in-depth conversations with private practice members to understand their specific needs, challenges, and what's driving the satisfaction gap.
Q3 brings a strategic question about launching a new subscription education model. Before committing development resources, a research pulse with target users explores how they currently approach ongoing learning, what they'd realistically use, and what price points make sense given their actual budgets and constraints.
By Q4, leadership is preparing the strategic plan for the following year. A final research pulse tests key assumptions in the plan with member conversations before finalizing major initiatives.
This model transforms research from an annual snapshot into a strategic asset deployed when and where decisions require member insight. Rather than one large research project per year, the association maintains research capability that supports multiple decision points throughout the business cycle.
The annual or bi-annual investment may be comparable to traditional annual or bi-annual member survey, but the value increases significantly because research directly informs active strategic questions rather than sitting in a report waiting for the next planning cycle.
Building Research That Centers Member Reality
Traditional member surveys serve some important functions. They establish baselines, track satisfaction trends, and provide members a voice in organizational direction. The limitation isn't that surveys produce bad data. It's that survey data alone often doesn't provide the depth, specificity, or behavioral understanding needed to confidently guide strategic decisions.
The strongest research approaches combine surveys with qualitative methods that explore actual member experience. They ask not just what members think but what members do. They investigate not just who's engaged but why others aren't. They provide not just annual snapshots but ongoing insight capability.
This requires shifting how associations think about research methodology. Instead of asking "what do you value most?" the question becomes "walk me through how you made your last decision about professional development." Instead of measuring satisfaction scores among survey respondents, research includes conversations with members who don't typically respond. Instead of annual research projects, associations build research as an ongoing capability.
The goal isn't just collecting data. It's understanding the lived reality of members well enough to make confident strategic decisions about what to build, how to deliver it, and which member needs to prioritize.
When research is designed around behavioral understanding rather than opinion measurement, the entire approach shifts. You learn not just that networking matters, but specifically what kind of networking solves what needs for which member segments. You understand not just that engagement is low in certain demographics, but why and what would actually make a difference. You can test program concepts against member reality before investment rather than after.
Ready to build research capability that centers member behavior and supports year-round strategy? Highland’s Member Pulse program provides associations with both quantitative member surveys and qualitative behavioral research throughout the year to understand what members actually do and need. Not just what they say they want.
The question isn't whether to invest in member research. The question is whether that research will help you understand member reality well enough to make the strategic decisions that shape your association's future.
