I find a lot of value in reviewing survey data, particularly a survey where many of the same questions have been asked over a long period of time.  You can understand how attitudes are changing or which trends are developing when viewing data from historical  surveys.

Cohasset Associates has been doing an Electronic Records Management Survey every other year for several years.  These are usually in association with either AIIM or ARMA.  Some of the questions have answers over the last 5 survey periods (10 years ago), but they do update the questions to reflect changes in the industry.

The 2009 Cohasset/ARMA International findings were released a couple of months ago (See link to press release here).  I recently had an opportunity to review the report.  The Executive Summary of the report is available here and the full findings are available here (Registration required for the full report).

A few interesting items I found in the 2009 survey:

1. Does your organization have a formal records management program?  This question has been asked since 1999.  The percentage responding yes to the question has been increasing each survey year since 2003 but then dropped from 88% to 83% between 2007 and 2009.  It is almost a given that every organization has a duty to preserve records to prove their business transactions.  The trend over the last few years has been more litigation and more compliance requirements.  Why would the survey show a drop in the last 2 years?
2. The good news from those with a Records Management program - Those that rank their effectiveness as excellent, great or good increased from 64% to 76% and those that ranked it fair or marginal decreased from 35% to 24%.  Most of those surveyed said the effectivness of their records management program has increased over time.
3. The question on where does Records Management report in your organization shows generally that over the last 3 survey periods it has been moving toward Legal/Compliance and away from Administrative Services and Other.  The percentage that reports to IS/IT has remained nearly the same.
4. The survey showed that respondents are beginning to think about emerging potential sources of records.  Over the last 2 survey periods, the percentage of organizations that have a formal policy regarding retention practices for voicemail, instant messaging, blogs and web pages all showed increases.
5. One question that I found the responses interesting to was Which function in your organization currently has primary responsibility for the management of electronic records created and used in the normal course of business?  The role of IS/IT has been steadily decreasing over the last several survey periods while Records Management has been holding the same for the last 2 surveys.  A new category called individual business units was added in the last survey period and in between it and other, a little less than 1/3 of the results were in these 2 categories.
6. In the area of long term digital preservation, there has been a slight increase in the confidence that the organization could successfully demonstrate that it's electronic records are accurate, reliable and trustworthy many years after they were created.  The confidence level has been increasing since the question was first asked in 2001.

There are a lot more interesting statistics and findings in the survey.  Download a copy and see where your organization stands against others incuded in the survey.