MTISurv Capabilities

Like most survey systems, Mighty Serve can ask questions such as...

What is your name? Fill in the blank:

What is your gender? (Click the appropriate bubble: click more than 1, MTISurv turns the other one "off")

Male      Female

How many years have you worked for this organization?
(Type in a numeric response, like "15" – MTISurv will range check the data to ensure it is in the range you specified, say 0 to 50 years.)

Which software do you use on the job? (Click all that apply.) (Click appropriate bubbles: all, some, or none.):

Excel      Word      PowerPoint      Access

What is the importance of this software to your job? (Click the appropriate Rating for each item.) Mighty Serve will only allow one rating on each row. MTISurv can be told to insist on ratings if they are missing or to ignore missing data.

Software	Not Used	Little	Some	High
Excel
Word
PowerPoint
Access

Unlike most other survey systems, Mighty Serve can...

Provide sufficient space for meaningful write-in comments. All systems allow for "fill in the blank" type responses to answer questions like "Name." These responses may be set at 20 to 30 character spaces. A second type of related question is the "write-in" response. "Write-in" questions where you are asking for a free-form response to answer a question like "What should the organization do to improve employee morale?" are not limited like competing products to 128, 256, or even 720 characters, MTISurv permits the Survey Author to solicit THOUSANDs of characters. We typically allow 1,000 characters to respond to focused questions and 2,000 for the "General Comments" question we always include at the end of the survey. Not all analysis systems can handle these lengths, but the professional toolkits we use have no problem with these write-ins. You can even permit respondents to make comments on any type of question. For example, if a person wanted to make a comment relative to the way a question was worded, they could. MTISurv allows surgerical extraction of data and overly long fields can be filtered out when extracting data for specific analysis program packages.

Selectively administer the right questions to the right people. While many survey packages can "skip" around individual questions, MTISurv can ask a question early in the survey and remember the answer, much later when you need that information for branching. In addition, you can combine answers from several questions at once to tailor the survey for each survey respondent – each person only needs to respond to questions that are approrpriate to his or her situation. MTISurv has immediate access to all prior answers (text or data) given in the survey by the respondent and can use that information in later screens. For example, MTISurv can display "Welcome John." after asking for the survey respondent's first name.

Remember respondents after they log off and restart later. In surveys where a unique User ID is assigned, MTISurv will refresh itself with all a person's prior answers at log-on time. A person may start the survey at the office, log off for lunch, then log back on after lunch. You may go to a meeting (forgeting to log off, but log-off is automatic after 15 minutes of non-use) then log back on after the meeting. Not quite finished? Log back on from home and complete the survey. All this without losing more than 1 screen of data (for the auto-log-off). Every time a respondent clicks on the "NEXT" key or selects a choice from an auto-advance screen, that response is recorded on the server hosting the MTISurv survey. Even if a person fails to complete the survey, all answers up to that point have been recorded. Studies from "comparable environments" show that about 50% of people who log on actually complete an Internet-based survey while only 25% – 30% (of that same sample) return floppy disk-based surveys. With proper organizational oversight, survey return rates can climb into the 70% range.

Expand your application horizons. With the ability to "jump" anywhere, forward or backward in an Mighty Serve Script, you gain great application flexibility. You can code just-in-time training aids, generate mini-tutorials, or administer job knowledge tests with items selected to match the respondent's job tasks indicated earlier in the "survey."

Capitalize on long lists of items. Input a single question stem and Mighty Serve can automatically build a new screen for every item in an Excel spreadsheet. For example, design an MTISurv survey screen that asks "How important is this task to your job?," provide MTISurv with a spreadsheet of 1,000 task statements, and you have a powerful job analysis survey. This means, with a single screen definition, you can administer a survey list with potentially thousands items with almost no effort or lead time. Examples of typical lists include:

• Tasks and Duty Statements for Job Incumbents,
• Certifications Held,
• Courses Taken,
• Tools Used,
• Competencies,
• Reference Materials Used on the Job,
• Job Satisfaction Items,
• Best Ways to Improve Productivity or Safety Knowledge, Abilities, and Skills (KSA) Items.

Support multi-layer or "drill down" data collection. Good survey design will organize long lists into layers, such as "Tools" broken down into "Hand Tools" and "Power Tools," followed by "Hand Tools" broken down into "Hammers," "Saws," "Screwdrivers," etc. Mighty Serve can be instructed to ask about a list in layered groups. In this process, a respondent would be asked, "Do you use tools on your job?." If yes, the person would be asked if he or she used "Hand Tools," then asked about "Power Tools." If the job incumbent said yes to "Hand Tools," but not to "Power Tools," the incumbent would next see only those items under "Hand Tools." Use of this feature is encouraged in the proper settings and "preview" screens may be advisable in some important cases where the categories themselves may not be clear to the respondent. The time saved by showing survey respondents only relevant items can be very sizeable and this translates into dollars saved in the cost of this project.

Support multi-pass data collection. Consider a list of 100 competencies. MTISurv, in PASS ONE, may ask the survey respondent to "Click all competencies needed to perform your job." and the respondent is shown each of the 100 competencies in the list. If requested, Mighty Serve can use the results of that PASS ONE to expedite data collection on a second or subsequent pass. A second pass on that same list may ask the job incumbent to "Rate the importance of each competency to your job." and, if the respondent only indicated 10 out of the 100 competencies in PASS ONE, PASS TWO would only show those 10 for "importance" ratings.

Support grouped-question data collection. A survey author can group questions together and ask a series of questions for each item in a list before advancing to the next item. In some surveys, the use of multiple passes is not appropriate, and an immediate succession of questions on a given item is more important. For example, for each competency a survey author wants to ask three questions before moving on. In this case, MTISurv would show the item stem like: "Advanced Mastery of Excel for Financial Computation and Reporting." MTISurv could show the following "grouped" questions before proceeding: 1) Does your current job require the competency shown?, 2) Is the competency required upon starting the job?, 3) Is this competency associated with an essential element of your job?

Intermix stand-alone questions with any number of lists. Mighty Serve can handle more lists in a survey than a survey respondent could ever hope to complete. While the analyst may be delighted with thousands of data points, no survey respondent is going to complete industrial strength surveys unless they employ various forms of strategic and tactical branching described above.

Last updated: 2/16/06