An article entitled “Demystifying Survey Research: Practical Suggestions for Effective Question Design” was published in the journal Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (2007). The aim of this article is to provide practical suggestions for effective questions when designing written surveys. Sample survey questions used in the article help to illustrate how some basic techniques, such as choosing appropriate question forms and incorporating the use of scales, can be used to improve survey questions.

Since this is a peer reviewed, open-access journal, those interested may access the full-text article online at: http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/516/668.

In addition, for those interested in exploring survey research more, I have found the following print resources to be very helpful in this learning process:

Converse, J.M., and S. Presser. Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1986.

Fink, A. How to Ask Survey Questions. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003.

Fowler, F.J. Improving Survey Questions: Design and Evaluation. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1995.

SurveyMonkey’s April newsletter reports their new Bounce Report feature:

“Sometimes when sending survey invitations through our collector, the email addresses may bounce the message back to you because the email is invalid, the receiving server is too busy, the receiving email inbox is full, and so on.

Now when sending your survey invitations through our Email Invitation collector, the messages are delivered by our email server. If the message is undeliverable, the email will be considered a Hard Bounced email in the Edit Recipients portion of the collector.

You now have the ability to do the following:

• View the Bounced emails.
• Export them from the list.
• Remove them from the list.

This will help to ensure that your lists are current and contain valid emails for future survey response collections.

To learn more about the new Bounce Report feature, please refer to the following Help Topics:
Check Bounced Emails
Hard Bounce Tutorial“

Perley CM, Gentry GA, Fleming S, Sen KM. Conducting a user-centered information needs assessment: the Via Christi Libraries’ experience.  J Med Libr Assoc  2007 Apr; 95(2):173-181.

This article provides a good example of a needs assessment using multiple evaluation methods. Librarians at the Via Christi Libraries in Wichita, Kansas, provide information services to all employees of the Via Christi Regional Medical Center (VCRMC) and needed to develop a strategic plan to meet the expanding use of their services and increasing cost of providing access.  This article provides detailed descriptions of how the researchers used a self-administered survey, telephone survey, and focus groups to gather information of increasing depth among users, and includes appendices with survey and focus group questions. The samples used in the project were not random, but the researchers used many venues to capture a solid cross section of their user population; and the multi-method approach allowed them to corroborate findings across different perspectives.  They also described how they used the findings to develop a strategic plan and listed their “lessons learned” about doing needs assessment.  This is not a “how to conduct a needs assessment” article and the findings are the main point of the piece.  But their concrete description of their methods provides added value to their article.

The North Suburban Library System (north suburban Chicago, IL) has created a Return on Investment (ROI) Calculator on their website in keeping with their theme for the month of July, 2007: Dollars and Sense: Why Libraries are a Good Investment. For more information about this tool, visit:http://www.nsls.info/articles/detail.aspx?articleID=143.

Imholz S, Arns JW. Worth Their Weight: An Assessment of the Evolving Field of Library Valuation. New York: Americans for Libraries Council, 2007.

“Worth Their Weight” takes stock of the field of library valuation, defined as the process of assessing the value of a library to its community in actual dollars and cents. The report was issued by Americans for Libraries Council (ALC), “a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing innovation and investment in the nation’s libraries.” The report describes different valuation models adapted from business and the nonprofit sector, such as social return-on-investment, triple-bottom line accounting, corporate social responsibility reports, and the balanced scorecard. To provide an overview of the valuation field, the report includes summaries of 17 public library valuation and impact studies (with links to the full reports). These summaries include detailed descriptions of the methods used, including actual surveys employed by the libraries. Finally, the report suggests ways to build the field of valuation and apply findings for use in library advocacy. The report relates specifically to public libraries, but the information has applicability to hospital and health science library valuation.

Donald Dillman is probably the most recognized scholar of social science survey research. He has done numerous experiments about the effect of item formats on how people respond to survey items. For instance, in “check all that apply” survey questions, the items at the top get the most responses because respondents stop reading halfway through the list. Changing the list to a series of “Yes No” questions forces respondents to read the entire list and results in better survey data.

The link below takes you to an article authored by Dillman and Christian that reports results from a series of experiments on item formats that can guide us in the best design of survey questions:

The Influence of Words, Symbols, Numbers, and Graphics on Answers to Self-Administered Questionnaires: results from 18 Experiments

You can find many other articles about surveys at Dillman’s website:

Dillman’s website