Are you getting the relocation support you need in order to succeed as a moveable family? Expat expert Robin Pascoe gives you a channel for input.

 There are numerous relocation surveys that examine the challenges of relocation in order to help companies and sponsoring organisations to better develop relocation policies. But, with very few exceptions, they neglect to go straight to the source—the family—for input.

Family Matters! will fill this gap by sampling only the accompanying spouse, the working partner in his/her capacity as spouse or parent, and any high school children in the family. The entire family can do this survey with lots of room provided to give us your opinions. As we are only offering one survey (instead of multiple surveys depending on where you fit in the family) do keep in mind that some questions may not apply to you. Just skip them.

Click here to take the survey. 

Who should participate in this survey?
Any and/or all immediate family members 14 or over.

For the purposes of this survey, ‘family’ is defined as follows:

Any combination of two or more persons who are bound together over time by ties of mutual consent, birth and/or adoption or placement and who, together, assume responsibilities for variant combinations of some of the following:

• physical maintenance and care of group members
• addition of new members through procreation or adoption
• socialisation of children
• social control of members
• production, consumption, distribution of goods and services, and,
• affective nurturance — love

Source: The Vanier Institute of the Family, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

It shouldn’t take you long, 20 minutes tops, to help us. The survey link will remain active until 15 June 2008.

The questions should be clear, but if you don’t understand one, just keep going.

Your responses are completely anonymous and will remain confidential. That is, no company or sponsoring organisation that move families will know who you are. And, it is entirely voluntary to fill in the demographic form at the end with an e-mail address. That information is only being collected so we can send you an Executive Summary of the results of the survey, available in late 2008.

In recognition of your contribution to this important exercise, after we have collected all the responses, we will be making a donation of USD 2.00 CDN for each survey to a very well-respected Canadian organisation which helps families in Africa called The Stephen Lewis Foundation which can be found at www.stephenlewisfoundation.org.

April 2008 (this survey can be taken up until 15 June.