Infer More, Describe Less: More Powerful Survey Conclusions through Easy Inferential Tests.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/istl1550Abstract
Many librarians use data from surveys to make decisions about how to spend money or allocate staff, often making use of popular online tools like Survey Monkey. In this era of reduced budgets, low staffing, stiff competition for new resources, and increasingly complex choices, it is especially important that librarians know how to get strong, statistically reliable direction from the survey data they depend upon. This article focuses on three metrics that are easy to master and will go a long way toward making librarians' survey conclusions more powerful and more meaningful: margin of error (MoE), confidence Level (CL), and cross-tabulation table analysis. No complex mathematics or expensive software is required: two simple and free online calculators are introduced that will do the math for you. This article puts the power of improved survey analysis within reach of every librarian and includes eight recommended best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Downloads
References
Byrne, Gillian. 2007. A statistical primer: understanding descriptive and inferential statistics. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice [Internet]. [cited 2012 February 24]; 2(1):32-47. Available from: http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/168/239
Fisher's Exact Test. 2011. Joose's In-Silico Online. [Internet]. [cited 2012 February 24]. Available from: http://in-silico.net/statistics/fisher_exact_test
Ghaemi, S. Nassir. 2009. A Clinician's Guide to Statistics and Epidemiology in Mental Health: Measuring Truth and Uncertainty. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, p. 38.
Nardi, Peter M. 2003. Doing Survey Research: A Guide to Quantitative Methods. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, p.206.
Nielsen, Jakob. 2000. Why you only need to test with 5 users. Jakob Nielsen's Alert Box [Internet]. [cited 2012 February 24]. Available from: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
Nielsen, Jakob. 2006. Quantitative studies: how many users to test? Jakob Nielsen's Alert Box [Internet]. [cited 2012 February 24]. Available from: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/quantitative_testing.html
Raosoft Sample Size Calculator. 2004. Raosoft. [Internet]. [cited 2012 February 24]. Available from: http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html
Rubin, Allen. 2010. Statistics for Evidence-Based Practice and Evaluation, second edition. Belmont (CA): Brooks/Cole, p. 315, 316.
rxc Contingency Table: How Many Rows? How Many Columns? [Internet]. Kirkman, T.W. Statistics to Use; [cited 2012 February 24]. Available from: http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/stats/contingency_NROW_NCOLUMN_form.html
Salsburg, David. 2002. The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century. New York (NY): Henry Holt and Company, LLC, p. 100.
Top Twelve Survey Best Practices. 2006. Constant Contact. [Internet]. [cited 2012 February 24]. Available from: http://img.constantcontact.com/docs/pdf/Top12SurveyBestPractices.pdf
VassarStats: Website for Statistical Computation. 2012. Lowry, Richard. [Internet]. [cited 2012 February 24]. Available from: http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/VassarStats.html
Wildemuth, Barbara M. 2009. Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science. Westport (CT): Libraries Unlimited, p. 350, p. 116-128.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
While ISTL has always been open access and authors have always retained the copyright of their papers without restrictions, articles in issues prior to no.75 were not licensed with Creative Commons licenses. Since issue no. 75 (Winter 2014), ISTL has licensed its work through Creative Commons licenses. Please refer to the Copyright and Licensing Information page for more information.
