Surveys and Interviews

Survey: a series of predetermined questions given to users of or participants in a system.

Purpose/ Advantage:

• When responses are multiple choice or ranked numerically on strength of feeling the results can be collated in a database or spreadsheet and the trends observed.
• Open questions provide an opportunity for users to respond freely and can reveal unanticipated needs.

Anonymous/Identifiable:

• Responders to a survey can be anonymous; anonymity could generate honest responses or conversely, dishonest or non-serious responses

Closed questions: a question with a suggested limited number of responses which should be selected by the responder

Advantages:

• trends can be can observed
• anonymity
• 
  

Disadvantages:

• does little to encourage the responder to open up
• not many people volunteer to complete surveys, often some sort of incentives are given to encourage responders

Open question: questions that do not suggest an answer and requires the responder to provide the answer

Advantages:

• answers are of the responder's personal opinion and is not limited

Disadvantages:

• trends cannot be easily observed
• accurate analysis cannot easily be made to find a relation between numerous surveys

Interview: discuss formally with (somebody) for the purpose of evaluation

Purpose/Advantage:

• open questions are normally employed, therefore they can probe more deeply than a survey
• may suggest surprising new directions

Focus groups: a group activity where you gather users or participants with similar interests in the system; brings together a no. of people for a group discussion or interview were all can contribute their ideas.

Understanding the problem

Closed questions: have a fixed number of answers
Ex. Which of the following is your favourite colour?

Open questions: does not require a tick box or anything of the sort.
Ex. 'What did you do today?'

Interview: more in depth, unexpected resp0nses,

Survey: time-efficient, requires enticement, can it be analysed?
A good survey has a combination of closed and open questions, mostly closed perhaps ONE open question where you can invite an uninvited response

Survey: URL, McAuley students fill
McAuley network information system is accessed using a computer or laptop
In the near future, students will be able to carry these laptops around with them

Q. Issuing laptops to students
(be unbiased; give staff the survey; hand survey out to different focus groups; make a list for focus group to choose eg. 1. Parents 2.Staff 3.Students)

Q. Bringing your own laptop
Stakeholders: students, staff, parents

Issues: laptop being stolen, lost, virus
Rate this issue according to its importance

System Development Cycle

Problems and Plans p.244

System Development Cycle (UMDIT)

1. Understand the problem- Interview participants, survery participants, what are the inputs? what are the outputs? what are the processes? who is involved with the system?
2. Making a decision- what type of solution? an IT solution? online or web-based?
3. Designing a solution- (making it happen), decide what software and hardware are required e.g. make a spreadsheet and put it up on sharepoint for a bus duty roster
4. Implementing the solution- preliminary testing. putting it on sharepoint, e-mailing everyone a set of instructions, installing hardware and software, training
5. Testing & Evaluating-Maintaining a solution- experiment (get someone to try it out), getting feedback, sample data (data that represents the day-to-day; typical data) and test data (checking for pan unusual or unexpected value)

Using Excel

• Formula; b7+c7+d7
• Function; =SUM (b7:d7)