ALA | Guide No. 6

by David Ward
1999. 80p. ISBN 0-8389-8108-9 $20 (LITA Members $18)
Surveys help evaluate user services, rate different library programs, facilitate needs assessments, aid faculty research, and more. Posting surveys to the Web provides an easy and convenient way to reach intended audiences, centralizes data collection and gives librarians greater control over analyzing and reporting results. This guide shows how to create robust Web-based surveys, and then gather and assimilate their data for use in common database and spreadsheet programs. The author has applied the techniques described in his own work and has designed both commercial and academic Web sites.

David Ward is the Reference Services Coordinator for the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois. Previously he worked as a reference/instruction librarian at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he applied the techniques described in this guide to the collection of demographics and quiz scores from the library's online tutorial. Ward has designed both commercial and academic web sites. He is currently a member of the LITA Top Technology Trends Committee.

PERL Scripts
File Location
HTML Feedback
Writing the Text File
Test the Form and Script
Security
A Final Note on PERL

A1. HTML Form Code
A2. Generic PERL Script
A3. Comma-Delimited Text File
A4. Faculty Research Example
A5. Student Internet Use Survey Example
A6. Reference Use Survey Example
A7. W3C Accessibility Guidelines Compliant Example
A8. Importing a File Into Microsoft EXCEL
A9. Creating a Database Using FileMaker Pro

Librarians traditionally have used surveys as a means of gathering input from a variety of diverse groups. Surveys can help evaluate user services, rate different library programs, conduct needs assessments, aid faculty research, and more. The popularity of surveys in the current library environment is evidenced by a simple search of "survey or surveys" on Library Literature – over 5,000 hits at the end of 1999. In the Internet age, posting surveys to the Web provides an easy and convenient way to reach intended audiences, centralizes data collection, and can potentially give librarians far greater control over analyzing and reporting results. Creating Web surveys themselves can be a fairly straight-forward process for those with HTML skills, but the stumbling block for many comes on the "back-end" of Web-based surveys. Once the surveys are submitted, gathering all of the data into a comprehensible whole that can be manipulated, tabulated, and processed into clean reports is a daunting task. This guide will show beginning and advanced users how to create robust Web-based surveys, and then gather their data into a compact and easy to use format.

Library growth and development depend upon responsiveness to patrons' perceived needs. Surveys can help evaluate many types of public services, including instruction workshops, reference services, quality of physical facilities, online and paper resources, as well as more intangible quantities such as perceived helpfulness and usefulness of the library itself. Examples of possible types include user surveys, faculty research (instead of getting emails from LISTSERV queries), needs assessment, and gathering feedback of any sort from a specific population.

We will show you the nuts and bolts for the development and use of such Web-based surveys. The basic premise is to take the data collected by a survey and turn it into a plain text file, which can then be imported into common productivity software programs (like database and spreadsheet applications) and analyzed. In the first step of this process, you will be asked to conceptualize what sort of data you want to gather, and how you intend to use it afterwards. Next, you will need to construct a Web page to gather user input. Instructions will be provided about the design and coding of that page. Then you will modify a generic back-end PERL script to process this data. The script will write each survey response into a plain text file, which you can then import into databases, spreadsheets, and other applications. Finally, you will learn what you can do with all of this information once it is safe and sound in the application of your choice.

It should be noted that there are many other ways to produce the end result we are looking for – survey data in a compact and portable form. However, other methods (like using Microsoft ASP pages and VBscript to write directly to Access/SQL databases, for example) require more programming knowledge, and can be overly restrictive in their application. Our idea is to design a process that can easily be used in a variety of environments.