F16: Developing Rapid Turn-Around Library Questionnaires
Session Description
Questionnaires are powerful tools to gather information from library patrons about their needs, experiences, and knowledge, but developing a questionnaire is often easier said than done. What questions should you ask? How long should your questionnaire be? How can you make sense of the results you have gathered? In this whirlwind session, Professor Todd Milford and Librarian Pia Russell will provide a quick and interactive workshop on the key principles, possibilities, and pitfalls of designing sound surveys in library contexts. Because tight timelines and budgets are frequently the norm, this session will focus on rapid turn-around approaches for quick questionnaire design. Using the BCLA Professional Learning Assessment project as an example, this session will take a step-by-step look at the development of a questionnaire from start to finish. Furthermore, this workshop will facilitate questions and ideas for how you might apply questionnaire approaches in your own work. To get the most out of this session, come with your own library questionnaire idea to consider.
Speakers
Pia Russell
Biography
Pia Russell is the Education Librarian at the University of Victoria. Pia’s areas of research include: the history of educational publications, libraries and social justice, youth information behaviour, and library assessment. Pia holds a MEd from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT), and a Master of Information Studies (Archival and Library concentrations) also from UofT. Pia has published in scholarly and professional journals such as School Libraries Worldwide, The Journal of Mixed Methods Research, and Feliciter.
Todd Milford
Biography
Todd Milford is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. Prof. Milford’s areas of research include: educational measurement, quantitative methods, teacher preparation, and science education. Todd has a PhD in Measurement and Evaluation (UVic), a MEd in Special Education, and Bachelors degrees in Education and Biology. Todd has published extensively on school effectiveness research, accessibility and disability in education, and survey design in such publications as Creative Education, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, and International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education.