Monday, February 28, 2011
Vacation Week
This week is break week at the Davenport campus and as a result I will not be posting a new entry until next Monday. For those in Davenport, please enjoy this time off, for I know it is much needed. For those at the other campuses, your time is soon coming, and I wish the same to you. We all work hard, and every now and again some time to recuperate is much needed. Back atcha soon!
Monday, February 21, 2011
Words on Good Writing
One of the most common ways academics communicate is in writing. And good writing is a skill increasing lost in these days of truncated communication via email or twitter or texting. Nonetheless, one of the coins of our realm is a good scientific manuscript in which we share our ideas, research, or perceptions. Writing well helps us do that effectively. To that end, I wish to cite an excellent book, by noted editor and writer Robert Day, “Scientific English: A Guide for Scientists and Other Professionals.” (1)In his text, Day devotes a chapter to discussing redundancies and jargon, and he has much we should consider.
Doublespeak: This where we double words with the same meaning. Typically, we do as an intensifier, but it is bad and unnecessary verbiage. Examples are terms such as “free gift,” or “the pinnacle of perfection.” I view this as added words conveying no additional meaning.
Useless words: We add and add words to our writing, in order to perhaps impress people with our erudition. But I spent two decades as an editor, in which my task was to make everyone's writing as clear and concise as possible, which meant that I removed all the unnecessary added words. Take a look at the following list of terms and think carefully about what they convey: “complete stop,” “consensus of opinion,” “end result,” “fewer in number,” past history,” repeat again.” Now look at this list, which removes the useless additions: “stop,” “opinion,” “result,” “fewer”,” history,” and “again.” No change in meaning, but many fewer words used. Now, this is fairly obvious. But consider how we write our scientific papers: “In our paper, we will show that A caused B when conditions were such that C was causing D,” or even worse “This paper demonstrates a summary of evidence that indicates that A may under very specific circumstances lead to a direct cause of B if and only if condition C is met so that outcome D occurs in other situations.” Look at all the unnecessary words here! Try to edit this for clarity: “We show that A causes B.” The rest is discussed in the paper.
Oxymorons: This is a term with contradictory words in it, the classic example being “jumbo shrimp.” There are so many others: “clearly confused,” “death benefits,” “definite possibilities,” “partially complete,” etc. Do not use them.
Words and expressions to avoid: We should not use certain words and terms because shorter and simpler ones should suffice; the idea is to effectively communicate meaning, not obfuscate by adding meaningless words. Why say “a majority of” when we can say “much,” or “based on the fact that” when we can say “because?” Let’s reduce clutter.
Writing is a skill and the more we write the better we get at it. Add in the help of a professional editor, and in the end you will have a very good and potentially publishable manuscript.
References
1. Day R. Scientific English: a guide for scientists and other professionals. Phoenix, AZ; Oryx Press, 1995
Doublespeak: This where we double words with the same meaning. Typically, we do as an intensifier, but it is bad and unnecessary verbiage. Examples are terms such as “free gift,” or “the pinnacle of perfection.” I view this as added words conveying no additional meaning.
Useless words: We add and add words to our writing, in order to perhaps impress people with our erudition. But I spent two decades as an editor, in which my task was to make everyone's writing as clear and concise as possible, which meant that I removed all the unnecessary added words. Take a look at the following list of terms and think carefully about what they convey: “complete stop,” “consensus of opinion,” “end result,” “fewer in number,” past history,” repeat again.” Now look at this list, which removes the useless additions: “stop,” “opinion,” “result,” “fewer”,” history,” and “again.” No change in meaning, but many fewer words used. Now, this is fairly obvious. But consider how we write our scientific papers: “In our paper, we will show that A caused B when conditions were such that C was causing D,” or even worse “This paper demonstrates a summary of evidence that indicates that A may under very specific circumstances lead to a direct cause of B if and only if condition C is met so that outcome D occurs in other situations.” Look at all the unnecessary words here! Try to edit this for clarity: “We show that A causes B.” The rest is discussed in the paper.
Oxymorons: This is a term with contradictory words in it, the classic example being “jumbo shrimp.” There are so many others: “clearly confused,” “death benefits,” “definite possibilities,” “partially complete,” etc. Do not use them.
Words and expressions to avoid: We should not use certain words and terms because shorter and simpler ones should suffice; the idea is to effectively communicate meaning, not obfuscate by adding meaningless words. Why say “a majority of” when we can say “much,” or “based on the fact that” when we can say “because?” Let’s reduce clutter.
Writing is a skill and the more we write the better we get at it. Add in the help of a professional editor, and in the end you will have a very good and potentially publishable manuscript.
References
1. Day R. Scientific English: a guide for scientists and other professionals. Phoenix, AZ; Oryx Press, 1995
Monday, February 14, 2011
Pedagological Scholarship
Efforts involving Palmer faculty have led to an upsurge of scholarship across all three campuses. One of the goals of the Center for Teaching and Learning is to enhance faculty scholarship; another is to enhance teacher effectiveness. We can do both by engaging Palmer faculty in the conduct of educational research. There is a general belief that good researchers can make good teachers, but oddly enough actual research has not shown a significant correlation between scientific research and teaching. However, when the scholarship is pedagological, this situation reverses, and being able to conduct such research does impact your teaching effectiveness in a positive way. Weimer (1) offers several reasons why this is the case:
You explore the questions that interest you. She notes that doing scholarship allows you to examine those areas in which you may have interest or wish to obtain additional information. We all wish to do scholarship in areas that interest us; for example, I am interested in informed consent in research and I have done research in that area. As a result, you are energized by your work and by what you find. Mainly, because of what you learn.
You develop instructional awareness. Here is the truth: most of us were never trained as teachers and we come by our teaching skills by a great deal of on-the-job training. We may be unaware of teaching theory, but the more we learn about our craft, the better able we are to address issues, concerns and challenges as they occur. This makes us better teachers.
You think more deeply about teaching and learning. I have come to a sad realization. People who do not teach do not really understand the tasks of those who do. And we live in a culture where, in general, teachers are now pawns in a political debate between differing world views. How often have I heard that, because someone only has 12 contact hours of teaching, they are obviously overpaid and must be sitting there for the remaining 28 hours of the week? And for us, we get bogged down in the daily minutiae of preparing and going to class- how much we need to cover, test preparation, grading, and so on. How much can we affect how well and how much our students learn? How much is our responsibility as opposed to theirs? What is the calculus here? As we ponder these issues through our own scholarship we can begin to come to grips with answers to the vexing problems confronting those who teach.
You improve for the right reasons. As you do educational research, it makes your own teaching a more positive endeavor. This is not remediation; it is new learning for you and new application. You are doing the work to help you perform better at what you do every day of your working life. You can make changes that are based on evidence.
It keeps your teaching fresh over the long haul. I’ve been teaching for 31 years now. I was at National University of Health Sciences for 23 of them, and during that time taught the same class for more than 15 straight years. Yes, I made changes along the way, but they were incremental. Yes, I tried new teaching methods, but sometimes they did not work as well as I wanted. I went and earned a master’s degree in medical education just because I was not, and am never, satisfied with my teaching. Research here helps you gain new knowledge and apply new methods. It makes you current.
It improves conversations with colleagues. Rather than complaining, we are talking about exciting, novel changes and methods. It changes the tenor of our discussions. How often do we meet with our colleagues to discuss our teaching methods? As opposed to our problems? This can help alter that balance in a positive and useful direction.
I encourage you to consider your own projects. I urge you to then submit to a conference such as ACC-RAC. It will make what you do all the more exciting for you.
And have a happy Valentine's Day!
References
1. Weimar M. Enhancing scholarly work on teaching and learning: professional literature that makes a difference. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006: 169-174
You explore the questions that interest you. She notes that doing scholarship allows you to examine those areas in which you may have interest or wish to obtain additional information. We all wish to do scholarship in areas that interest us; for example, I am interested in informed consent in research and I have done research in that area. As a result, you are energized by your work and by what you find. Mainly, because of what you learn.
You develop instructional awareness. Here is the truth: most of us were never trained as teachers and we come by our teaching skills by a great deal of on-the-job training. We may be unaware of teaching theory, but the more we learn about our craft, the better able we are to address issues, concerns and challenges as they occur. This makes us better teachers.
You think more deeply about teaching and learning. I have come to a sad realization. People who do not teach do not really understand the tasks of those who do. And we live in a culture where, in general, teachers are now pawns in a political debate between differing world views. How often have I heard that, because someone only has 12 contact hours of teaching, they are obviously overpaid and must be sitting there for the remaining 28 hours of the week? And for us, we get bogged down in the daily minutiae of preparing and going to class- how much we need to cover, test preparation, grading, and so on. How much can we affect how well and how much our students learn? How much is our responsibility as opposed to theirs? What is the calculus here? As we ponder these issues through our own scholarship we can begin to come to grips with answers to the vexing problems confronting those who teach.
You improve for the right reasons. As you do educational research, it makes your own teaching a more positive endeavor. This is not remediation; it is new learning for you and new application. You are doing the work to help you perform better at what you do every day of your working life. You can make changes that are based on evidence.
It keeps your teaching fresh over the long haul. I’ve been teaching for 31 years now. I was at National University of Health Sciences for 23 of them, and during that time taught the same class for more than 15 straight years. Yes, I made changes along the way, but they were incremental. Yes, I tried new teaching methods, but sometimes they did not work as well as I wanted. I went and earned a master’s degree in medical education just because I was not, and am never, satisfied with my teaching. Research here helps you gain new knowledge and apply new methods. It makes you current.
It improves conversations with colleagues. Rather than complaining, we are talking about exciting, novel changes and methods. It changes the tenor of our discussions. How often do we meet with our colleagues to discuss our teaching methods? As opposed to our problems? This can help alter that balance in a positive and useful direction.
I encourage you to consider your own projects. I urge you to then submit to a conference such as ACC-RAC. It will make what you do all the more exciting for you.
And have a happy Valentine's Day!
References
1. Weimar M. Enhancing scholarly work on teaching and learning: professional literature that makes a difference. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006: 169-174
Monday, February 7, 2011
More Blogs that Cover Chiropractic and/or Medical Education
There are several blogs within the chiropractic profession that discuss matters of interest to educators. I offer links to several of them here, along with a few comments regarding their content and perspective.
Perles of Wisdom
This is the website of Dr. Steven Perle, a professor at the University of Bridgeport College of Chiropractic. Steve writes an ethics column for the Journal of the American Chiropractic Association, and I would likely position him on the left of the chiropractic political spectrum. His website often deals in difficult professional matters; his recent entries have attempted to debate columns written by chiropractic critic Edzard Ernst.
Health Insights Today
This is a blog and newsletter which comes from Cleveland Chiropractic College and which is edited by author/educator Dr. Dan Redwood. It is professionally done, and covers a wide range of topics, but has a general slant toward public health matters.
Daily HIT Blog
This is linked to Health Insights Today and is also from Dr. Redwood. This takes a much stronger public health approach. Recent entries in the blog have examined “fat cancers,” global obesity, whether pesticides can be linked to rheumatoid arthritis, etc.
Rochesterchiro’s Blog
This is the blog of Dr. Brett Kinsler, who calls himself a skeptical chiropractor. He can wax quite passionate about the issues he is interested in, and he does list evidence-based practice as one of those areas.
Medical Education Blog
This is an excellent blog covering general issues related to medical/healthcare education. For example, the current (at time of writing) blog entry discusses how to work with “difficult students.” It looks at defining difficult, and diagnosing causes of difficulty and then treating them. Overall, this is a well-done site with a wealth of information.
Medical Education Futures Study
For those of you interested in reducing disparities and increasing access to healthcare, this is a nice site to gather information on that topic.
I urge all of you to consider how you might use your own blog to impart information to your students on a regular basis, covering those areas that are of interest to you and for which you feel students may benefit. If you wish any help in creating one, please let me know.
Perles of Wisdom
This is the website of Dr. Steven Perle, a professor at the University of Bridgeport College of Chiropractic. Steve writes an ethics column for the Journal of the American Chiropractic Association, and I would likely position him on the left of the chiropractic political spectrum. His website often deals in difficult professional matters; his recent entries have attempted to debate columns written by chiropractic critic Edzard Ernst.
Health Insights Today
This is a blog and newsletter which comes from Cleveland Chiropractic College and which is edited by author/educator Dr. Dan Redwood. It is professionally done, and covers a wide range of topics, but has a general slant toward public health matters.
Daily HIT Blog
This is linked to Health Insights Today and is also from Dr. Redwood. This takes a much stronger public health approach. Recent entries in the blog have examined “fat cancers,” global obesity, whether pesticides can be linked to rheumatoid arthritis, etc.
Rochesterchiro’s Blog
This is the blog of Dr. Brett Kinsler, who calls himself a skeptical chiropractor. He can wax quite passionate about the issues he is interested in, and he does list evidence-based practice as one of those areas.
Medical Education Blog
This is an excellent blog covering general issues related to medical/healthcare education. For example, the current (at time of writing) blog entry discusses how to work with “difficult students.” It looks at defining difficult, and diagnosing causes of difficulty and then treating them. Overall, this is a well-done site with a wealth of information.
Medical Education Futures Study
For those of you interested in reducing disparities and increasing access to healthcare, this is a nice site to gather information on that topic.
I urge all of you to consider how you might use your own blog to impart information to your students on a regular basis, covering those areas that are of interest to you and for which you feel students may benefit. If you wish any help in creating one, please let me know.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Successful Classroom Innovation
As a member of the Curriculum Management Committee I am often involved in assessing proposed changes in the Palmer instructional program. This may involve evaluating a newly proposed course, or considering changes in existing course objectives, among other decisions that must be made. And when we design such changes, there are lessons we might apply to our effort. The excellent text “Designing and assessing courses and curricula: a practical guide” (1) provides a number of characteristics that can help make your efforts succeed. These include:
Have a plan and follow it: The text offers a model for curriculum design that has been shown to be successful, and it recommends you follow it carefully.
Do not do it alone: Involve others in your design efforts. Include your chair, quite obviously, but also include others who may be affected by what you are doing. And include those whose expertise you may need, such as those with expertise in, for example, instructional technology.
Strive for the ideal: Focus not on what exists but rather on what ideally could be. This can also help reduce potential turf war problems and can lead to new and novel curriculum approaches.
Collect information before you begin. In my estimation, this often does not take place. People focus on the end result more than the tasks involved in producing the end result and often do not do sufficient preparatory work. The information you should collect should address the need for your innovation, it should allow you to test your assumptions and it can provide base data to measure change.
Create ownership and keep key individuals informed. You need to make sure you have support before you begin a change process. All affected need to be kept informed and you need to consider who it is that may be affected. Involve key administrators.
Be sensitive to human problems. Curriculum innovation and change can significantly affect others. Change can be an emotionally laden process and we need to keep mindful of that fact. Those who are affected may see this in a negative light, forgetting that this is about institutional need, not personal need. Use administrative help. Talk to people. Answer questions respectfully.
Do not reinvent the wheel. Keep abreast of what is new, what has been tried and what has succeeded. Model your efforts after that, and don’t waste time and resources uing approaches that have failed in the past.
Pay attention to support systems and logistics. This really means that you need to work carefully with the registrar’s office to see how what you are planning fits into what can actually occur and be scheduled.
This is just a short overview of some of the issues you need to consider when you decide to innovate. This is something we all wish to do. We just need to smooth the path for innovation to occur.
References
1. Diamond R. Designing and assessing courses and curriculum: a practical guide, 2nd edition. San Francisco, CA; Jossey-Bass, 1998:237-238
Have a plan and follow it: The text offers a model for curriculum design that has been shown to be successful, and it recommends you follow it carefully.
Do not do it alone: Involve others in your design efforts. Include your chair, quite obviously, but also include others who may be affected by what you are doing. And include those whose expertise you may need, such as those with expertise in, for example, instructional technology.
Strive for the ideal: Focus not on what exists but rather on what ideally could be. This can also help reduce potential turf war problems and can lead to new and novel curriculum approaches.
Collect information before you begin. In my estimation, this often does not take place. People focus on the end result more than the tasks involved in producing the end result and often do not do sufficient preparatory work. The information you should collect should address the need for your innovation, it should allow you to test your assumptions and it can provide base data to measure change.
Create ownership and keep key individuals informed. You need to make sure you have support before you begin a change process. All affected need to be kept informed and you need to consider who it is that may be affected. Involve key administrators.
Be sensitive to human problems. Curriculum innovation and change can significantly affect others. Change can be an emotionally laden process and we need to keep mindful of that fact. Those who are affected may see this in a negative light, forgetting that this is about institutional need, not personal need. Use administrative help. Talk to people. Answer questions respectfully.
Do not reinvent the wheel. Keep abreast of what is new, what has been tried and what has succeeded. Model your efforts after that, and don’t waste time and resources uing approaches that have failed in the past.
Pay attention to support systems and logistics. This really means that you need to work carefully with the registrar’s office to see how what you are planning fits into what can actually occur and be scheduled.
This is just a short overview of some of the issues you need to consider when you decide to innovate. This is something we all wish to do. We just need to smooth the path for innovation to occur.
References
1. Diamond R. Designing and assessing courses and curriculum: a practical guide, 2nd edition. San Francisco, CA; Jossey-Bass, 1998:237-238
Monday, January 24, 2011
Selecting Treatments: Healthcare Education
While not all of us are going to be involved in training students in the use of therapeutic interventions and treatment, the work we do here is geared toward making that happen. In the evidence-based world, how does one go about selecting treatment? Sackett and colleagues (1) offer some thoughts.
They proceed from the decision that you have reached a point where you believe the patient’s condition does warrant treatment (and there are many reasons why you may not). And further, you have selected the goal of treatment; in the case of a chiropractic physician, it may be to decrease pain, to lessen disability, or something else. But now you need to select the appropriate and proper therapy (whether adjustment, exercise, counseling, or so on). According to Sackett, there are three ways to choose the intervention:
1. You consider your own uncontrolled clinical experience and of your colleagues and friends, or perhaps you extend certain concepts of mechanisms of disease so that you arrive at a therapy that “seems to work or ought to work.” This is an inductive approach to therapy.
2. You obtain clinical research papers, mainly comprised of clinical trials which are designed to expose worthless or dangerous treatments, and you select treatments that “are able to successfully withstand formal attempts to demonstrate their worthlessness.” This is a deductive approach to therapy.
3. You obtain recommendations from your teachers or colleagues, or from advertisements and you then accept the treatment “on faith.” Sackett refers to this as the method of abdication or of seduction.
Now, it will not come as a surprise that Sackett and colleagues prefers the method of deduction. They argue that using your own clinical experience carries risks that you may not be aware of, notably that what you are really doing is using “historical controls.” By this, they mean that when you compare your latest patient to those you have seen before and for whom you were able to treat successfully, you may be comparing your current and potentially new treatment to an older form of therapy. And if you are able to help the current patient, you judge this new approach as efficacious and superior. In this they see risk.
However current formulations of evidence-based care recognizes that clinical experience is one plank of a triple-planked construct: best available evidence from the literature, combined with clinical expertise and patient values. All are important. But as I see evidence-based care, we need to stay mindful that one of the most common reasons for using it is to determine what to do for a patient where we have questions about what to do; that is, for situations where we might not know what to do. In such cases, our past clinical experience may not be much of a guide. I like to use the example of Brucellosis (in fact, I will hear from a certain academic administrator cough cough Dr. Weinert cough cough for using this example). This is not typically seen in chiropractic settings, so when you are confronted with a patient with this condition, how would you proceed? You would not have clinical expertise in managing the condition. Thus, you would likely need to turn to the literature for best information. When you do have experience, well, that experience will tell you what to do.
Conversations such as this are important in understanding the basis for modern practice, and the literature is replete with them. I heartily urge readers to look into the philosophical basis for evidence-based practice.
References
1. Sackett DL, Haynes RB, Guyatt G, Tugwell P. Clinical epidemiology: a basic science for clinical medicine, 2nd edition. Boston, MA; Little, Brown, 1991
They proceed from the decision that you have reached a point where you believe the patient’s condition does warrant treatment (and there are many reasons why you may not). And further, you have selected the goal of treatment; in the case of a chiropractic physician, it may be to decrease pain, to lessen disability, or something else. But now you need to select the appropriate and proper therapy (whether adjustment, exercise, counseling, or so on). According to Sackett, there are three ways to choose the intervention:
1. You consider your own uncontrolled clinical experience and of your colleagues and friends, or perhaps you extend certain concepts of mechanisms of disease so that you arrive at a therapy that “seems to work or ought to work.” This is an inductive approach to therapy.
2. You obtain clinical research papers, mainly comprised of clinical trials which are designed to expose worthless or dangerous treatments, and you select treatments that “are able to successfully withstand formal attempts to demonstrate their worthlessness.” This is a deductive approach to therapy.
3. You obtain recommendations from your teachers or colleagues, or from advertisements and you then accept the treatment “on faith.” Sackett refers to this as the method of abdication or of seduction.
Now, it will not come as a surprise that Sackett and colleagues prefers the method of deduction. They argue that using your own clinical experience carries risks that you may not be aware of, notably that what you are really doing is using “historical controls.” By this, they mean that when you compare your latest patient to those you have seen before and for whom you were able to treat successfully, you may be comparing your current and potentially new treatment to an older form of therapy. And if you are able to help the current patient, you judge this new approach as efficacious and superior. In this they see risk.
However current formulations of evidence-based care recognizes that clinical experience is one plank of a triple-planked construct: best available evidence from the literature, combined with clinical expertise and patient values. All are important. But as I see evidence-based care, we need to stay mindful that one of the most common reasons for using it is to determine what to do for a patient where we have questions about what to do; that is, for situations where we might not know what to do. In such cases, our past clinical experience may not be much of a guide. I like to use the example of Brucellosis (in fact, I will hear from a certain academic administrator cough cough Dr. Weinert cough cough for using this example). This is not typically seen in chiropractic settings, so when you are confronted with a patient with this condition, how would you proceed? You would not have clinical expertise in managing the condition. Thus, you would likely need to turn to the literature for best information. When you do have experience, well, that experience will tell you what to do.
Conversations such as this are important in understanding the basis for modern practice, and the literature is replete with them. I heartily urge readers to look into the philosophical basis for evidence-based practice.
References
1. Sackett DL, Haynes RB, Guyatt G, Tugwell P. Clinical epidemiology: a basic science for clinical medicine, 2nd edition. Boston, MA; Little, Brown, 1991
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Stages of Survey Development
Over the course of the past week or so, I have had several contacts from faculty related to surveys they are in process of developing and for which they wish guidance on IRB application. As a result of looking over some of the proposed surveys I thought I would offer a few comments about the nature of developing them. Czaja and Blair, authors of a fine text on survey development (1), suggest a 5-step process for developing and completing a survey and I thought I would use their approach in offering these comments to you.
Stage 1: Survey design and preliminary planning. This stage specifically looks at the research problem and the research questions that the survey is designed to address. What is your goal in doing this survey? Is it to test a hypothesis, to test a causal model or to estimate the proportion of people who hold certain beliefs or attitudes? In asking this question, there are important issues embedded in it. For example, who is our population of interest? Is it all students at PCC, for example, or a particular trimester, or a specific subgroup from one of these? What is the sampling frame, since it is unlikely we will be able to capture every student in our target population? How will we contact them? In our initial planning, we also need to consider the kinds of questions we will ask, how much time we will need, and how we will analyze the results.
Stage 2: Pretesting. This is where we begin testing our initial design decisions. We need to think about how to reach our sampling frame, what kinds of records we will use for collecting information, how to word questions and so on. We have to draft an initial version of our questionnaire, and it is okay to borrow them from other past research, ensuring that we contact the originator for his or her permission. But keep in mind that past use in a different population is not a guarantee of success in using it in ours. Ru our draft past others for their comments, and incorporate them. Then we need to pretest the questionnaire in a small population of individuals. For example, in the PCCR we might use our research fellows to pretest a questionnaire. Once done, we gather information from that group, either via written comments or via personal interviews and/or focus group meetings, and from their comments we revise our questionnaire accordingly. We need to feel that we are asking what we think we are asking; pretesting helps to accomplish that goal.
Stage 3: Final survey design and planning. This is revision of our initial draft based on the input we have collected. It may also lead us to revise who our sampling frame is or how we analyze the data (we may find that a question we felt was close-ended is actually better asked as an open-ended question, shifting us from a quantitative analysis to a qualitative one.
Stage 4: Data collection. In this stage, you must monitor the results of the sampling and data collection activities. You should also begin coding your answers and preparing your data files ( for example, if you have a “yes- no” question, are you coding the yes response as “1” and the no as “2” or something else? Are you using Excel or SPSS or something else? What do you do with non-answers or double marks? Are you using double data entry, having a second person also code the data for reliability purposes?
Stage 5: Data coding, date-file construction, analysis and final report. This is now where you ensure all your data was properly entered, that you have coded it properly for analysis, that it makes sense when you do if you are looking at anything more than a simple descriptive analysis (how many answered each question).
All of these steps ensure that in the end you collect data that answers questions you are interested in clearly and without miscomprehension of your questions. These are necessary steps; please consider using them as you develop your own surveys.
References
1. Czaja R, Blair J. Designing surveys: a guide to decisions and procedures. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1996:11-30
Stage 1: Survey design and preliminary planning. This stage specifically looks at the research problem and the research questions that the survey is designed to address. What is your goal in doing this survey? Is it to test a hypothesis, to test a causal model or to estimate the proportion of people who hold certain beliefs or attitudes? In asking this question, there are important issues embedded in it. For example, who is our population of interest? Is it all students at PCC, for example, or a particular trimester, or a specific subgroup from one of these? What is the sampling frame, since it is unlikely we will be able to capture every student in our target population? How will we contact them? In our initial planning, we also need to consider the kinds of questions we will ask, how much time we will need, and how we will analyze the results.
Stage 2: Pretesting. This is where we begin testing our initial design decisions. We need to think about how to reach our sampling frame, what kinds of records we will use for collecting information, how to word questions and so on. We have to draft an initial version of our questionnaire, and it is okay to borrow them from other past research, ensuring that we contact the originator for his or her permission. But keep in mind that past use in a different population is not a guarantee of success in using it in ours. Ru our draft past others for their comments, and incorporate them. Then we need to pretest the questionnaire in a small population of individuals. For example, in the PCCR we might use our research fellows to pretest a questionnaire. Once done, we gather information from that group, either via written comments or via personal interviews and/or focus group meetings, and from their comments we revise our questionnaire accordingly. We need to feel that we are asking what we think we are asking; pretesting helps to accomplish that goal.
Stage 3: Final survey design and planning. This is revision of our initial draft based on the input we have collected. It may also lead us to revise who our sampling frame is or how we analyze the data (we may find that a question we felt was close-ended is actually better asked as an open-ended question, shifting us from a quantitative analysis to a qualitative one.
Stage 4: Data collection. In this stage, you must monitor the results of the sampling and data collection activities. You should also begin coding your answers and preparing your data files ( for example, if you have a “yes- no” question, are you coding the yes response as “1” and the no as “2” or something else? Are you using Excel or SPSS or something else? What do you do with non-answers or double marks? Are you using double data entry, having a second person also code the data for reliability purposes?
Stage 5: Data coding, date-file construction, analysis and final report. This is now where you ensure all your data was properly entered, that you have coded it properly for analysis, that it makes sense when you do if you are looking at anything more than a simple descriptive analysis (how many answered each question).
All of these steps ensure that in the end you collect data that answers questions you are interested in clearly and without miscomprehension of your questions. These are necessary steps; please consider using them as you develop your own surveys.
References
1. Czaja R, Blair J. Designing surveys: a guide to decisions and procedures. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1996:11-30
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