Making Surveys Work for Your Library
Guidance, Instructions, and Examples
- 128 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
Instead of using expensive off-the-shelf surveys or relying on a poorly worded survey, read Making Surveys Work for Your Library and design your own that collect actionable data. Library listservs and websites are littered with examples of surveys that are too long, freighted with complex language, and generally poorly designed. The survey, however, is a widely used tool that has great potential if designed well. Libraries can implement surveys for a variety of purposes, including planning, program evaluation, collection development, and space design. Making Surveys Work for Your Library: Guidance, Instructions, and Examples offers librarians a contemporary and practical approach to creating surveys that answer authentic questions about library users. Miller and Hinnant have experience designing, deploying, and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from large-scale, web-based user surveys of library patrons as well as smaller survey instruments targeted to special populations. Here, they offer library professionals a guide to developingâand examples ofâconcise surveys that gather the data they need to make evidence-based decisions, define the scope of future research, and understand their patrons.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1. The Value of Surveys, and Why Theyâre Hard to Get Right
- Chapter 2. Planning a Library Survey
- Chapter 3. Survey Methods That Work for Libraries
- Chapter 4. Scopes of Experience
- Chapter 5. Writing Survey Questions
- Chapter 6. Survey Populations
- Chapter 7. Survey Distribution
- Chapter 8. Analysis of Results
- Chapter 9. Taking Action
- Appendix A. Sample Demographic Questions
- Appendix B. Sample Questions About Services
- Appendix C. Sample Questions About Spaces
- Appendix D. Sample Questions About Communication
- Appendix E. Sample Questions About Collections
- Appendix F. Sample Programming Questions
- Appendix G. Additional Resources
- References
- Index
- About the Authors