Using Web and Paper Questionnaires for Data-Based Decision Making : From Design to Interpretation of the Results

"Using Web and Paper Questionnaires for Data-Based Decision Making is clearly written, easy to understand, and has plenty of examples and guides for those implementing these ideas. Designed as a cookbook, it superbly enables educators to write, administer, and analyze a survey."
Sandra L. Stein, Professor of Education
Rider University

Learn to use questionnaires and data-based decision making to support school improvement!

How effectively are teachers implementing the new literacy program? What do parents think of the proposed homework policy? Is bullying a growing problem? Understanding how to create appropriate questionnaires is essential in making data-based decisions that improve school policies, processes, and procedures.

Using Web and Paper Questionnaires for Data-Based Decision Making is a practical handbook for creating exceptional questionnaires for a variety of purposes, including data-based decision making. Author Susan J. Thomas provides authoritative guidance for planning a survey project, creating a questionnaire, gathering data, and analyzing and communicating the results to a variety of audiences.

Features of this reader-friendly guidebook include

• Sample cover letters, invitations, parental permission forms, and planning templates
• Extensive examples, activities, and checklists
• Web-based questionnaire guidelines
• A step-by-step case study of a successful survey project

Offering suggestions for successfully using both Web-based and paper-based questionnaires, this practitioner-focused manual summarizes the key steps of successful survey projects and identifies critical success factors for each step.

Designed primarily for principals, district-level administrators, and teachers, this invaluable resource is also suitable for policymakers, state-level administrators, and graduate students in education and social sciences.

Susan J. Thomas is Managing Consultant with IBM Business Consulting Services, Human Capital Solutions. She works with a variety of clients and companies to provide consulting services in the areas of skills competency analysis (which includes different types of questionnaires), certification test development and skills assessment, questionnaire development (both paper-based and Web-based), and training evaluation. She also assists clients with data-based decision making by helping them design question-naires and by performing statistical analysis and data mining to help them make recommendations and create action plans. Prior to joining the IBM Corporation, she was a measurement statistician and test development specialist with the Educational Testing Service. She was also an adjunct professor at Rider University, where she taught graduate courses in research methods (including questionnaire design), testing and measurement for teachers, basic statistics, and authentic assessment. Previously, she was a faculty member at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Florida State University, where she taught courses in measurement, research design, and various areas of educational and developmental psychology. She has directed numerous funded research projects, has presented extensively at the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association and the National Council for Measurement in Education, and has served as a Divisional Vice President of the American Educational Research Association. She has published several journal articles, as well as Evaluation Without Fear with coauthor Roger Kaufman, and Designing Surveys That Work!, a predecessor to the current book. She conducts workshops for teachers on topics related to assessment and has developed many training guides for these workshops. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire and received her Ph.D. from Purdue University.