 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am Krista Burns at the Nebraska Library Commission Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event where we cover Commission activities and any library topics that may be of interest to Nebraska librarians and library staff We have our own staff do some sessions and we bring in guest speakers as well We do these every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. They got less for about an hour give or take We do record them. So if you are unable to attend a live session, you can watch and listen to a recording This morning we have Katherine Bruckmeyer from the Library Commission's one of our own staff who's going to talk to us about Surveys and well, I like the subtitle of it how to find out stuff from the people in your community Basically, so I'm going to pass over the microphone and control to Thanks Krista Good morning everyone. My name is Katherine Bruckmeyer I am a research analyst here at the Nebraska Library Commission and if you can tell by my voice I have a cold so bad for me, but good for you that this isn't a live presentation So nobody's going to catch a cold for me today except for maybe Krista So the name of the topic today is Surveys focus groups and observation and or how to find out stuff from people in your community I'll go ahead and go through the Presentation and if there's time at the end we might be able to do question and answer and As it always is the case with many of the end compass live presentations, there's always room to Expand upon some sort of topics, so I'll provide my email address You can contact me that way as well Plus I do hope that we'll be able to provide more end compass live presentations as follow-up to this because it's mostly an introduction So off we go There we go, okay a little bit about me I am a research analyst and special projects associate here at the Nebraska Library Commission. I've been here about a year and a half I also do grant writing for the Commission and I'm also an evaluator You do see my contact information there, so feel free to get ahold of me by email or phone. That's great I still love to talk on the phone. I don't know There's something about the person-to-person contact that I always appreciate so give me a jingle or send me an email either way a Little bit about you Are you a library director? Are you library staff? Are you a trustee? Perhaps you're a friends or foundation board member and your credentials. Well, lookie there I like to do graphics, so you're a navigator today And so we're really happy that you're here and let's try to navigate through this together Here are some places where everybody's from. I'm missing one from Nebraska City Thanks for joining us Just didn't have time to add that star as you can see everybody's from across Nebraska and what's great about Encompass Live is that we can all get together and Learn a little bit and we don't have to drive 500 miles to do that Okay, let's get started You're probably here because you have an information need let's talk about different kinds of information needs as a background for What we're going to talk about in specifics, but You might be planning and as you see there's a list here of different kinds of planning strategies It might be a strategic plan marketing plan budget justification Perhaps you're doing a return on your investment You might be doing grant writing or fundraising capacity building a feasibility study which might include your building or Capital improvements needs assessment or perhaps even just program planning And who might you be reporting to you might be reporting to stakeholders which could be your board of trustees It could be your city. It could be Your friends or foundation Or you might be ready to write your annual report or you might be doing program evaluation Which might even be for some great reporting that you might be doing So what's the goal here? You probably have a goal in mind Which is why you're trying to get some information Perhaps you'd like to build your customer or patron loyalty or you'd like to identify Attractive prospects, which means you're trying to bring some people on board with you Perhaps you want to focus on your high potential customers or patrons or you're predicting future usage patterns or Improving return on investment or perhaps Identifying new products and services. This came from a marketing angle. So that's might be sounding like marketing to you So I didn't move it over into the library realm so much, but I think it crosses over Crosses over pretty well So what's the question that you might have you've already realized that you want to gather some information And you probably have thought about how you're going to disseminate the information once you get it But what kind of a question do you have are you looking for satisfaction? performance Perhaps there are some needs that you see in the library and you want to ask some you have questions about that Maybe you're doing a SWAT analysis, which is strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats and so you're looking for Some of that information Maybe you'd like to know what your reputation is in your community Or you would like to be able to show what the value or worth of the services you provide Perhaps you're doing a comparison study where you compare against other libraries that have gathered similar information You might want to know something about your users or your patrons and your non-users Perhaps you want to look at usage patterns how people use your library or you just want to take a general snapshot of your library Okay, let's talk about participants and subjects for a moment Subjects tends to sound more like research, but what you are doing is research in some ways and Albeit it might be a bit more anecdotal and you're not in an ivory tower But at the same time you probably will follow some some rules to to do this. So let's talk about participants for a moment You've basically I put them into two categories users and non-users and There really wasn't a whole lot out there for me to draw from so these were the ideas I came up with Users might be your patrons. They might be visitors to your library. In other words, they are they've walked through your door You might have different kinds of users you might have one-time users somebody who comes in to use your copy machine or You might have your regulars Your users have different demographics background. They have age ethnicity gender disability Geography income these are sort of some of the questions you might want to keep in mind when you start to formulate What kind of information you're going to gather and how you're going to gather it? It might also be by your users. You could look at the type of checkouts that they use and the type of questions I'm non-users you have potential users. These are people in your community that are not Library patrons. They don't have a library card. There might be people who hold the library in high esteem, but don't use it There might be people who know what the library is what they do in the community And so they're aware of the services you provide they keep informed in on What you do provide? They just may not use the library themselves. Also, there are people who are Unaware of the services that the library provides and a lot of us a lot of us in the library world Are sometimes frustrated that we try to put the information out there and we still know We don't understand how it is that our message doesn't quite get across and so There are still people who might be unaware or uninformed and we'd like to try to figure out how to get that information to them So that might Puts into perspective what kind of questions you're asking Also, I was thinking that you know you have people that come in to use your computer lab But there are people who own their own computers and so they're not coming into your library to use your computers Also, I've heard about people who don't have a library card because they buy every book that they read So these might be book buyers, but you like I said you don't know until you ask some questions So you might want to consider asking questions of your non-users as well as your users to gather some more information Okay, talking about gathering your information. There are several ways to go about it and some of them might be more rigorous than others You've got your surveys or questionnaires. You have individual interviews focus groups observations expert opinions number gathering and Existing data demographics and reports We're going to talk about three of these. We're going to talk about surveys focus groups and non-preservations today One moment, please while I switch to the next screen There we go. Let's see. Did I did I skip one? Nope. Okay. Here we go Let's talk about surveys first I think most of us are probably familiar with surveys because at some point in time we've been approached to participate in one and So either you get a telephone call or you receive something in the mail Asking you for your opinion or information about you and so surveys actually fall into two categories there's the questionnaire and there's the interview and Basically the questionnaire is something that is administered to the person and they fill it out themselves They completed themselves the interview is basically you Reading off of the questionnaire to the person and so you are administering the questionnaire So the first part is the questionnaire. It might be mail or paper and pencil Which means you're you distribute it to somebody but they fill it out in front of you or They hand it back in at another time It might be group administered in other words There's a group of people and you hand them out at that time and they complete them Internet surveys, I'm sure we've all been approached while we're online saying could you please let us know what you think of our website? Or what would you think of our product and then there are also ways to do it through email? People send you a survey and actually it might be one that you print out and fill out and then mail in or it might be One that you complete in a form and then email it back interviews These are person to person face to face Or over the telephone Okay, what are the advantages and disadvantages of completing a survey? advantages especially with paper and pencil questionnaires Internet and telephone Questionnaires is that there probably isn't any interview bias because the person looks at the at the Document and there's no one there to kind of color the questions. They just read what's on the page and it's relatively inexpensive postage might run a little bit high but in terms of Time spent man hours and that sort of thing is one of the more inexpensive ways to gather information It's repeatable in other words. You could do it several times with the same person Or you could have one group that you would do and then do another group and so you can use it more than once It often gains thoughtful answers because if you ask some open-ended questions, it gives people time to compose their responses you can reach more people through a survey and People might be more candid to write things down if they think that their Responses are going to either be confidential or anonymous in other words their name won't be attached to their responses and It's fairly easy to analyze Depending on the questions that you ask, but it's a lot. It can be a little bit more easy to analyze than some of the other methods The disadvantages it doesn't always ensure qualified respondents because you can't ask sometimes you if you do a random sample of people you are going to get whoever you get and Sometimes if you're looking for people who have visited the library and you send out to a random Number of people you might get people who haven't visited the library And so they're not going to be able to answer the questions that you have oftentimes These if you're mailing these out they go into what's called the round file Which is their trash bin and so it's tough to engage people to to participate in surveys Also, there's the inability to do follow-up after a question So if somebody gives you an answer and you wish that you had a chance to have them Explain their response or something to that effect. There's no give and take there's no time And then there might be poor turnaround time because you mail it out and give them a chance to respond You give them a chance to send it back and so that can take a few weeks Let's talk a little bit about these terms and This is sometimes when you get into survey methodology where people's eyes start to glaze over But we do want to talk about it just a little bit population is The entire group that you're interested in so You might be interested in users that would be a population you might be interested in non users That would be a population you might be interested in the residents in your community That's another population or you might be interested in users in your county So that's users and people who live in your county Sample this is when you can't send a questionnaire to all five thousand people that live in your town because that would be high Expense and so you try to figure out a way to get a representative sample of your five thousand people and Send out instead just one hundred Questionnaires and there are various methods for doing that and at some point in time Maybe we can go into greater detail on that Questions how are you going to formulate the questions? There are different ways to ask questions and there are different ways to have the respondents give their answers More one of the more common ones is multiple choice or on a rating scale But sometimes you can also ask open-ended questions and they can write a narrative content What are you actually asking about what are you trying to get after are you going after satisfaction? Are you going after? People's opinion. Are you going after actual usage those sorts of things? bias This is where You might be asking a question, but if you ask it in a certain way it's going to Sway how people respond so in other words If you ask somebody, you know, I'm trying to think You know, which would you prefer a gun or a knife to your head? Either way, there might be people who would prefer neither and you didn't give them a chance to give it That's that's kind of a silly one but There are other ways that you other questions that you ask that you Introduce the bias into the question and it makes it difficult to people for people to give you a true response And then administration, how are you going to get the survey out to people? How are you going to get the survey back from people and then how is the data going to be entered? Okay, let's talk about focus groups a little bit And I want to go into this one in greater detail because surveys are pretty Pretty common and focus groups might be a little less common for some of us. So let's talk about that in greater detail As you see here the definitions a focus group is a special kind of group discussion That is designed to elicit information about the wants needs viewpoints beliefs and experiences of your intended audience Focus groups can help you better understand the expressions and terminology Commonly used by people in your audience as well as their attitudes and beliefs about libraries and library services So for example, you might ask people What does the word reference mean to you or what does the word database mean to you? And you might be very interested to find that out because you've been using the word reference on your website Or you've been using the word database on your website And you don't see that your web pages are getting a high usage as high as you would like And so if you are redesigning your website or you're thinking about designing your website you'd like to get some feedback on usability for this for your web pages you might conduct a focus group and See with some of this terminology what would be the better headings so that people can find what they're looking for Okay, what's great about focus groups focus groups are especially good at helping to uncover the reason behind people's responses For example why they prefer certain terms or why they would or would not do something in other words You might ask a question then you might you might be able to probe a little bit more get into a little bit more detail And so as a result focus groups can also play a useful role in Evaluations by shedding light on short-term outcomes and helping to explain findings from surveys So you might conduct a survey and then you might do a follow-up with the focus group to get into more detail that you Couldn't get through your surveys Let me go back here again The thing about focus groups and we'll talk about that on the advantages and disadvantages please look again at the second paragraph and look at carefully at the terminology short-term outcomes because focus groups tend to ask people what they're thinking about at that time and It can talk about people's intent, but it may not Shed light on on their behavior, so you might be able to find out what people plan to do or think they might do but you want You want to keep in mind that this is short-term Information and cannot necessarily be Generalized to long-term and to make long-term decisions Well, I use the backspace. Let's go the other way Okay, what are the pros and cons of using a focus group? The pros you can generate explore and identify key ideas and concepts What's great about focus groups is that someone might come up with something during the focus group that you hadn't thought of and That so at that time you can probe you can follow up. You can spend more time on it and so When you've got a key idea you can kind of let the group run with it for a little bit without running too far away but It's great to really open it up and really delve deeply It's a great way to understand your population You bring in a representative group, but they tend to like I said represent Quite a number of people You can also read nonverbal feedback. So for example if somebody's sitting there and They hear something perhaps that they disagree with they might cross their arms And cross their legs and sit back a little bit and not participate for a while And so you could you could read that as disagreement You might be able to probe with them to draw them back into the conversation and and allow them to Also provide their information It's used to identify themes or capture ideas So if you're talking about a topic You might see and then you change the topic you might see though that the same responses come up So you might be talking about the times that the library is open and Then later on you might be talking about services you provide But they bring back the times that the library is open and so you start to see some trends or People might talk about accessibility to the building in While you're asking different questions and they bring it up several times. That's something for you to follow up on Questions can be asked as they arise in other words You might be talking about you might be asking a question and say so what do you think about our reference desk staff and Everybody says what do you mean by reference? So you meet you can follow up on that Which is great because if you had said what do you think of our reference desk staff on a survey They can't they can't ask you what you mean by reference desk staff And so you've just lost some valuable information because you cannot You cannot explain that You can also explore related and unabbed and anticipated topics as they arise and so you you might have been asking about the hours and Then somebody says yeah, it'd be great if we could have an Evening story time hour and you're not even asking about evening story time hours But it's come up and you just you hold on to that and you file that away and you go back to that when you're Analyzing your information that you gathered and then one that one that I added Is this is a great time to administer a group questionnaire? And so because you've got a captive audience and if you do several focus groups it does add up so You could distribute the questionnaire ask them to fill it out and turn it right back in and then you have a hundred percent response rate Which is fabulous What are some of the cons of focus group? This is where bias could be introduced if you need to have a really good Facilitator who can ask questions in a non Judgmental way and then also if people answer things that they don't become defensive based off of perhaps some of the negative feedback that the group introduces That they just keep the conversation going and they remain neutral It is a smaller group Let's say that you do five focus groups of 10 to 12 people That's just about 50 people whereas you might be able to send out a survey to a hundred people The analysis I have to admit is quite difficult Because you have to do content analysis and search for themes and search for topics that have that arise and It's it's a more difficult way to It's not like you can look for averages from ratings Or tally the number from a multiple choice response And when you think you've asked you've asked a question that you're expecting the answer from That you were going to analyze that you get all these other Unexpected and an anticipated topics. You're like well my whole plan just went out the window how I was going to even analyze this Right, absolutely absolutely and it and with all the tangential conversations that can go on Even if you kind of had it mapped out how you were like she said how you were going to analyze it Then you have these side topics that arise and so you have to analyze those as well You do need trained interviewers or moderators Which may also be yourself, but I would recommend that you bring in somebody who would be considered neutral in other words I would recommend against having the library director run the focus group because People who are in the focus group might feel that they can't be as candid as they'd like to be because they don't want to Offend the library director if they disagree with something that's going on with the library because you might try to get gather some information about topics that might be controversial such as Providing money for our new building which can raise a lot of a lot of questions by a lot of people Especially when you start talking about money So having a trained interviewer or a moderator somebody who can remain neutral and Knows how to run a focus group and there's great information out there on how to run a focus group So if somebody's never done it before But you they think that they can Be a good facilitator There's some wonderful information out there how to run a focus group and it's pretty pretty easy to To catch up on that information We remember what I was talking about short term Information, this is where because you're talking with a smaller group This is not a time to make a major decision based on the information that you gather this is a way to probe on specific information in the short term and I Probably wouldn't take this information to the foundation and try to ask $400,000 based off of my information from five focus groups You can't necessarily generalize the findings to the population you might try your best to bring in different people From your community to participate in the focus group But again, it's a smaller number of people that you're reaching and while each of them might represent a certain group of people In other words, you bring in a high school student. You bring in somebody who's 80 years old You might bring in people who are professionals and others who? Or you might go by Education people who just have their high school diploma versus people who have their masters It's tough to catch everybody and each of us is an individual and so we have our own biases and our own opinions and with a smaller group, it's a little bit more difficult to generalize your findings to your population and You also need to find a suitable place to conduct the interview. So if you've got a library with a small meeting room That doesn't fit 12 people very easily then you've got to go out and search another place Also, not on the cons is the time intensiveness of running a focus group because you have to You have to recruit the people to participate in the focus group You have to organize and prepare for the focus group prepare all of your questions Not to mention the amount of time that it takes to connect the focus groups Plus the time that it takes to analyze the information afterward. So If you're looking for what they call quick and nerdy way to get some information, I would go with first with a survey and To get more information in a shorter amount of time and with a lot less Elbow grease necessary to get to gather your information If you would really really like to learn what people think about if you're trying to plan some pro Plan for programming and you'd like to hear what people are needing and wanting Then the focus group might be for you because you would really like to delve into The details really get into the details then the focus group might be the way to go Okay, some questions to consider when you are Putting together focus group. How many sessions would you like to conduct in other words? If you're trying to reach about 50 people you're going to need to conduct five Five sessions five separate sessions What is the time required? This means that this is a couple of different things How much time do you need to prepare for the focus group to recruit your participants? And then also the time required how much time does it take for the length of focus group? I would recommend going no longer Well between 45 minutes and two hours and if you go two hours you definitely need to take a break in there somewhere number of participants I Wouldn't go with a group any larger than 12. I also would keep it between 8 and 12 if you get too few participants Then then you might as well be just doing an individual interviews if you only have four people for a focus group That's really not enough because there's not enough input from the group to Give it some momentum Also in choosing our participants You you do want a variety. I talked about the high school student the 80 year old somebody with the Perhaps with a high school Diploma versus somebody with a master's you might be looking at users and non-users You might be looking at representatives from the various city entities such as parks in Iraq and from Your city council You might be talking about business people in town and There's just a huge array of different people that you could go with but having a variety In your pool is great and having a variety in within the group is great too because Somebody might give a response that somebody else hadn't thought about before and then they realize they've come to Some sort of opinion and they're able to give it at that time One note that I would say though is if you are looking at doing a focus group with younger people I would go ahead and keep it with Just high school students it can be a bit daunting for Younger individuals to be in with adults and they may not feel as comfortable Giving their information and their opinions and so if you did want to do a focus group pretty much about youth planning and youth Programming you might just do a focus group with high school students And then again, you would like to try to recruit kids that are in let's say Involved in sports versus kids who are involved in music you would try to get kids that don't participate in your programming But you think might you know be potential potential patrons Let's move on to the next The next category here. Let's talk about compensation More for market research. It's often there is some sort of Monetary compensation that is provided to people for their time Or perhaps coupons or gift certificates that sort of thing When you're talking about a non-profit Oftentimes when you're recruiting for participants if they find out that You you want to be up front with them while you're gathering the information And since you are a nonprofit most people are willing to give an hour of their time an hour and a half of their time for the good of the cause but having cookies and soda is Is it's oftentimes just enough compensation for people or bringing in pizza or something to that effect? You know if you haven't any of an evening so Though that oftentimes is compensation enough given given that you are a city entity and You're not out to make a ton of money based on their marketing Based on their information that they provide to you and then the cost How much how much does this actually cost to do this you probably want to look in terms of your salary? How much time you're going to be spending? and And that's in terms of preparing for the focus group recruiting your participants The time that it takes to run the focus groups and then the time that it takes to analyze and report your information And that sometimes is the barrier to doing focus groups because of basically it's time equal salary Versus being able to do a survey which is takes a lot less time to put together And you might weigh the cost of your postage versus the cost of salary to to do all of this work Are we overwhelmed yet? How's everybody doing here? Eight steps to Plan and implement focus groups. So you need to and this is kind of a recap of what we just talked about You want to identify what you want to accomplish and the resources you have available and Choose your method and play it how you will select and recruit your respondents Decide where you will conduct the focus groups. This is a place where Especially if you're trying to reach your non-users You might consider doing this at a community room or at a place that is outside of the library Rather than people feeling like they're kind of being recruited to come through the door of the library They can ask me to get a library card. What are they going to do with me there? So this might actually be a good opportunity to have your focus group outside of your library You meet them where they are basically decide how you will conduct the focus groups So who's going to facilitate the focus groups? That's probably the biggest question recruit your respondents and make the practical arrangements Prepare your interview or focus group guides. So what specific questions are you going to ask and It's good to practice on a couple of people before you actually do your focus group Because you will find that it just like with a survey. It's good to Test it on a couple of people and have them make comments because the way that you ask a question Might be interpreted completely different than from what you intended So it's a really good idea to run through your questions with a couple of people and you can't start with your staff But I would also draw in a couple of people that are unfamiliar Especially if you're looking at doing your focus group with non-users So bring in a couple of strangers to the library and ask them to please you know go through your questions with you Just so that you have a better perspective So then you conduct your focus groups and you record your feedback and you analyze and apply what you've learned I'm going to go to the next page, but Yep, I want to go back Okay, one thing about Conducting your focus groups and recording the feedback. Here's where some of the time-intensiveness comes in if you're going to do hand recording of Handwriting down the responses. It is hard And so you definitely want to have a second person in there who doesn't participate in the focus group and is not the Facilitator to take notes bring in a stenographer No, but it is tough and Especially if it's getting running away a little bit more than one person is talking Which you do want to avoid But it is very in time Intensive to write as furiously and fast as you can the other option is to record You can either videotape or you can audio tape this and then go back in and Take notes because then you can stop the recording and and transcribe and How you transcribe and into what great detail you transcribe is is your At your discretion, but this is where the time-intensity does come in and it's very labor-intensive Okay on the observation So observation is lots of fun at least for me because I I find it fascinating You know what people do and why they do it and how they do it It's yes people watching is fun. That's why I like to go to the malls. Okay Observation this is how possibly You might one of your questions might be how are people using the library space itself? You might be thinking about new signage for your library or you might be thinking about the fact that you can't build a new library but you would like to redesign your space for optimal use or You might be looking at creating some new areas say a teen area or something to that effect So the next question is you might be exploring the dynamics of visitor behavior In other words, how they interact with the desk staff and how do they interact with each other? And then you might this third one is similar to that you might measure visitor interactions at touch points in the library in other words say In your computer lab would be one And then maybe at your reference desk that might be another and then another maybe in your children's room Those all might be touch points in your library So where are you going? What what areas of the library are you gonna? Observe you might observe your reading areas say in your periodicals or magazine area You might be thinking about your meeting room space Your computer labs your parking lot or the parking outside your building the circulation desk another place to Do observations is when you're doing reference questions over the telephone or by computer if you're doing Mevo or Facebook or something to that effect or even emails that come in excuse me Sorry need to take a break and have a glass have a drink of water There we go and then also in the stacks and where your books are located or where your DVDs are located or anything else that people are checking out Another way to look at observation is by usage Reference questions that people that people bring to the desk or over the telephone through email user intercept so one of your staff is going to is picking up a book out of the stacks that That they're getting for a hold and somebody stops them and asks for directions to a place or China if you're trying to find people where they are the computers The computer lab or your IPACs your catalog whether you have an IPAC or you have a card catalog how people are browsing and then at checkout and circulation and You might have you might be thinking of other usages that I haven't thought of Try to move on there we go What are the advantages and disadvantages of observation? Advantage are great because you have a bird's-eye view people might not even notice that you're observing them and so you can get some very good information off of Watching people without them knowing that you're watching them so they're in their natural environment and They're not trying to say something that they think will satisfy you or anything to that effect You're just catching them right where they are Their behaviors that you know, especially if they don't realize that you're observing them There's quite rich content to be found from observations It is a unique method and you can gather some really great information that way Some of the disadvantages are the time that it takes to do it you get fewer data points because you can only do so much observation and You don't catch everybody And it might be difficult to analyze So it just depends on how you How you capture your observations? Let's think about what would go into an observation You need to dedicate you need to dedicate staff time to the effort or you need to bring in volunteers who would be able to do this You definitely want to do your study all times of the day and every day of the week that you're open So because behavior is going to be different on a Saturday morning than a Tuesday night And there we're talking about days and times of day You want to if you're doing your staff or volunteers they need to learn how to gather this information without judgment in other words If a reference question, you know You want to make sure that they know what the difference is between a reference question and a directional question in other words Where's the bathroom doesn't count as a reference question? And then also if they think that Somebody talking in the stacks doesn't count as browsing That's if it depends on how you define everything. So you want to make sure that they're following whatever rules or definitions that you provide and and not try to color it Okay, so then you train try assess every tool. So let's say you give it a try for a week and you gather some very good information and You take a look at it. You might find that you've come across pretty Fascinating information. You'd like to give it another chance, but you have some other questions that you want answers. So you might You know set it up a little bit differently Consider bringing in outside opinions This is kind of where market research would come in someone who could do market research might come in and and help You with what kind of questions you're going to ask and how you're going to gather your information And then you're training all your staff to observe and report having worked at a public library Sometimes the hour goes by so fast at the desk that the end when we were trying to count in a number of Restorants questions in person and over the phone. I had to I had to estimate just because it had been a crazy hour And so at the end I was thinking okay how many reference questions did I just answer and You might you this is something to consider somebody might ask you for reference questions. Do you count that as one? One interaction or do you count that as four for reference questions? So this is where you having definitions set up for the staff Can you know can be very important Okay When is a good time to do your observation? At some point in time ALA recommended this and this is something to keep in mind when you're doing your bibliostack collect But you determine an and you can determine an annual estimate by counting your data points during a typical week in October and multiplying the count by 52 They say October Because it's not it's not the summer When you have tons of extra people coming through Possibly for your summer reading program and it's not December when it and November when everybody's on vacation and away from their your town or your city So try to go for a typical week, which is neither unusually busy or unusually slow Avoid holiday times vacation periods for key staff Because they're probably gonna be helping you with your observation or days when unusual events are taking place in the community or library Choose a week in which the library is open its regular hours and Include seven consecutive calendar days from Saturday from Sunday through Saturday or whenever the library is usually open So if your library is open Tuesday Thursday Saturday, you would do yours on Tuesday Thursday and Saturday Okay, let's see These are different ways to Make your observations You can do a density map in other words every time somebody visits the Every time somebody visits the DVD point DVD section, you've got a map of your library and you put a little x right there Activity map every time somebody uses the computer lab you you have You put an x next to that Patrons who visit each section first in other words they come in the front door. Where do they go first? And then patrons who request each assistance type a A computer use chart or computer length of use chart and Then how are you going to gather this information? Are you going to have? Something at the desk and you're gonna just mark everything down as you see it happen Are you going to take video and then go back in and analyze it? Are you getting into video? I don't have any professional recommendation here and I would probably say I would do paper and pencil first Before trying to go for video just because people haven't given their consent to be To be on video So how are you going to collect? Oh, I think that was the end of observation. Yes. It was that was the end of observation Actually, could we open up another document and I'll go through some of these Okay Yeah Okay Okay, let's see. I think this is it. We're gonna go to the web. We're almost out of time. Did it come up? I'm actually Yep, here we go. Okay, so I've got a I've got a resource page for you to go back in and Go over everything that I've thrown at your way In greater detail, but this is fun because this shows you This is the activity map This is either an activity. I think this is an activity map or a usage map and it shows you how to do it And to me actually it looks kind of fun. Yeah, it is time-intensive You have to really bring your staff on board Another way that you could do it is tally the number of patrons who visit each section first So when they come in the library, where's the first place they go and you just do a tally And This was great because this is all about library usage. This is a really neat study that was done I think it was done in Chicago and they did this at four branches in Chicago. It's a pretty fascinating stuff for me Anyway, I thought Okay, now we'll go back to the slide show. Oh No Do I actually if you go ahead? Oh Yep, that's it. There it is Thanks, Krista Krista save the day data number 25 Krista save the day again Okay Data collection. We only have about seven minutes left here, but we're almost to the end data collection is this going to be paper and pencil and that might be If you're mailing out your survey or even if you're doing a telephone interview, you're going to be writing it on paper and pencil Maybe you're sending out your survey by email and You're going to have it come back to you by email Maybe it's going to be on the web and you're going to do a survey monkey Which I could talk about survey monkey for a whole hour. It's a lot of fun and and that might be a really good end compass life Yeah, how to how to conduct a survey monkey. Oh, that'd be fun. Okay, or also on computer So maybe you're doing a telephone interview, but you're you're gathering your data right there on the computer You're entering it as you as as they give you your responses and then there's such thing called quantitative and qualitative Quantitative data is in numbers. So for example, if you ask somebody are they very satisfied somewhat satisfied neither satisfied nor dissatisfied Somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied You can do that on a not a ranking but assign a number one two three four five and then you tally up How many ones you have how many choose you have in other words they represent and so you can that's quantitative qualitative for example as if if you give an open-ended question or Yes, if you give an open-ended question For example, and they you look for themes or same with the focus group They're going to have quite a bit of qualitative information there Entry and storage. How are you going to enter your data? I would recommend doing this in Excel with the spreadsheet. It's pretty easy to move your data around and Do tallies and averages and that sort of thing You can also do it on paper and pencil. You know if you just want to tally things up And also then why did I put final notification there? I'm sorry. I don't know okay and then also there's again the analysis which is quantitative and qualitative and This again would be a whole nother a whole nother hour Analysis and reporting and now this is where if you kind of know After looking at these how you want to report your data it helps you frame the kind of questions you ask So you can do counts percentages averages frequency categories Patterns you could also take quotes from people and just go ahead and pass those on as they are And also you can do coding And here are a couple of examples of what your question might be Let's say you'd like to do some improvement on your web website So you might do an internet survey using Survey monkey and then another way you could do it is observation in other words you have somebody sit down You ask them to find something on your website, and then you watch them and how how they actually do it So that's one way to use observation Let's say that you're doing a feasibility study for capital improvement You might send out a mail sir mail survey to sample of your general population This is a good way to get a hold of your users and your non-users You might do a focus group in other words bring in stakeholders people who are interested in the future of the library You might bring in business people and people from the city People who represent your taxpayers that sort of thing and then observation Let's say that you You just think that you're filled to the gills and you watch people in the stacks hunting and pecking for something in the non-fiction Or that your computer lab is too small and so you see people standing in line waiting to get on the computers That's where observation comes in handy because You might be able to collect How much your computers are used, but it doesn't collect how many people stand in line and how long they wait So there's where observation comes in handy Okay, what are some resources about surveys focus groups and observation? And different ways to frame your questions and goals. I love free management library It has helped me with the last four nonprofits that I've worked with and the website is management help org There are two books out there that are really great and one of them is planning for results and then the new planning for results this helps immensely There's also research methods knowledge base if you're looking for some of the definitions that I talked about today Even the word data which some people give some people chills. Oh by the way, I missed it I meant to say did data is not one of those naughty four letter words. It's actually pretty. It's You know become friends with the word data. There we go That's at your social research methods net and then web junction also offers a really good wealth of knowledge And you might look into web junction org. That's where I learned about the Observation study that was done in Chicago lots of fun to read up on So what are your next steps? Well, here's your badge of courage because you've come this far to learn about surveys observations and focus groups and I Really hope that I've given you Some information that hasn't been too overwhelming but might spur you on to follow through on one of those three angles to gather information and so, you know Take heart and believe that you can do it You don't need to be an expert in survey research and methodology to conduct a survey Just need to have a give it some thought and come up with a plan and You know get some information and ask for help and you can do it. You'll do great We have faith in you And so if you have any questions, is there do we need to check for questions? Yeah, okay I know there are hours almost up, but let's just take a look Yes, if you do have any questions, you can either raise your hand and we'll unmute you Let me see if you have a microphone or you can also type your question if you don't have a microphone into the question section Hold on just a second. I do need to Okay Be happy to entertain your questions. Yeah Give a shout out Okay, Steve, I've unmuted you go ahead. You don't have a question anybody have any questions, okay See Someone says that I did so well that you don't have any questions Wait, I can hear you somebody just said something on the microphone. Go ahead Will we automatically receive credit for this? Or do we have to mail in the evaluation? No, for when you attend your live online And couples live sessions. We automatically submit that information To our continuing education coordinator here at the library commissions You do not have to submit for the live attendance only if you listen to a recording would you have to do that? Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks Jan you say you had a question. I've unmuted you if you have a microphone you go ahead or you can type your question into the question section You answered my question. I appreciate it Steve would say you would love to have a session on survey monkey. Okay. We have a request We might plan that for a future you bet you bet. I'd be happy to walk you through that and Jan Did you have a question? I think that was Okay Okay, well, I don't want to take up too much more of your time So I just have a couple more things that I want to talk about Well, and but if you do have a question. Oh Go ahead Angela's question. How do you get people to get to focus group surveys? The super big monkey sounds interesting. Yeah, how do you get them to actually come in and participate? I guess recruiting is really important and I think one of the best ways to recruit is By word of mouth if you have a couple of people in your pay couple of patrons that you think are really good connector people In other words, they know a lot of people in town you can have them recruit for you and Or think of people that they think might might be really good For invitations for focus groups, you have a pretty good idea of the kind of people that you're looking for So if you can come up with a good list you just give them a telephone call I think that's the best way is to do a telephone call and to invite them and then give them a follow-up email with the details for a survey If you do a random sample, you're just you're doing a just You know, you don't know who you're gonna get but you Have your mailing list and you send it out Or you come up with what you think is a representative list and you you mail it out basically with the invitation To participate does that answer your question Angela? Okay, and the survey monkey is a lot of fun because if you have the email addresses of everybody in your library that you use for Sending out notifications for holds or overduce Then you can send them an email and ask them to follow the link to Survey Monkey Or you might post it on your website and ask people to follow the link to Survey Monkey You see the word evaluation under CE credit. That's because I personally would like to hear back what you thought of today's I Myself love surveys and questionnaires so the evaluation of course is not a requirement or anything for CE credit This is just me asking for your feedback. And so could we go to the evaluation real quick? Oh, is that one and I'll email it out to you at the same time. There it is. Yep, that's it It's just a little form and it's it doesn't take very doesn't take very long But if you would go ahead and fill that out and send that to devra dragos or you can send it to me That's fine because you know, I'm gonna be reading it anyway, but I Sure would love to hear back from you and that will be posted today But I think I'll also email it out to you Yeah, we can email it to you and we can put it up as part of the recording We'll get that up and live with all the better Information and handouts and links as well Okay, let's go back and we're almost done So Let's see here Are you dizzy yet? Okay. There are a couple of related topics With the one that that I just presented today These are archived and one of them is presenting data in meaningful and interesting ways And then also American fact finder mining US census for information about your community so you might get some background information from your community and then you want to follow up on it or You would kind of like to know how many people in your community have different levels of education or something to that effect So that when you're looking for a sample of people in your focus group You can find people who are representative of your entire community and Just to plug the next few sessions. We've got next week tech talk with Michael Sowers the next one I'm I'm giving again is adventures at Facebook getting your library on board on board Yeah, and then the next one is are you game game night at Perkins library? That's Hastings College Susan Franklin from Hastings College will be presenting on how they've been doing some gaming sessions at the college library And then April 7th is introduction to WorldCat Susan Nisley from here at the library Commission I'm giving you a nice intro to how do you how you can use WorldCat for research and for yourself and for helping your patrons So thank you very much for your time. It's been a lot of information in a short amount of time and Just go ahead and I'm here as a resource for you So please do go to that resource page that will be posted probably sometime today And that does have some follow-up for you on the topics that I just so lightly touched on today And then I'm also here to answer questions that you might have If you want more information how to conduct a survey before we actually have time To do an encompass live session Let's say you're shovel ready and you're ready to go. Please please go ahead and email me and I'll help walk you through it So thanks again for your time and I had a good time. I hope you did too Yeah, it's not very useful information and like Katherine said, there's a lot more things to talk about about this So hopefully they made it work. We'll plan a future one to do even more about this We're pre-booked up for the next month or so, but that's okay. We'll give you some time to work on these kind of Ways of getting information and do something new. So thank you very much for attending Please come come to our next sessions coming up that you've got the links for everything on here on the recording We'll be put up either today or tomorrow when we can get everything organized for that. No problem And that's it for this morning. Okay. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye