[home] | [FAQ] | [Current Projects] | [Past Projects] | [Request] | [Softwares] | [Authors] | [Disclaimer]


Frequently Asked Questions

  • View a Slide Show on development of MOOAT, and Online Assessment Tool
  • What do I need before contacting MOOAT?
  • What kind of questions should I ask myself?
  • What is the delay before the assessment actually start?

    • What do I need before contacting MOOAT?

    There are several things that you will need before contacting us.

    • Have your questions ready. We can help you on the phrasing on the survey questions if needed. One of the keys to Online surveys is the following. A major advantage of Online surveys is the ability to compute the results automatically without any human intervention. This is fast and reliable. To have a computer compute averages and standard deviation, it will need a particular set of data that it can understand. If there is but one input data that is different, problems will occur. It is therefore required to have the user have the least possible flexibility in the type of answers submitted. The person who writes the survey should think of ALL possible choices the questions can be answered by. Then, those cases will be considered in the calculations.
      Therefore, the LEAST the user type, the easier it will be to get numbers out of the survey results. Favored type of questions falling in this category are Radio button, Check Boxes, and menus. Text area in text input is usually to be avoided for statistics.
    • If you have have the HTML version of your survey, it will shorten the delay necessary to code it. However, we do reserve the right, not only to host the HTML page on our server, but to modify it to fit our needs. We should not have to alter the display, but we will have to modify the field names and values in your input field and form (HTML).
    • When you write your questions, make sure that there is ALWAYS a default answer for each question. Although this is not necessary, it is usually one of those rules of thumbs used when conducting Online surveys.
    • Make sure you write short and clear questions especially one one depends on the answer of the previous one. This is usually not a good idea to have several dependent questions on one another, as there WILL be inconsistencies in the answers (user errors).
    • Have all your questions in one page. Although it is possible to have several pages for long surveys, it is much easier technically to have all of them in one page.
    • Do not make your survey too long. If the number of questions exceeds 30 questions, the user's attention will decrease greatly and the accuracy of your results will drop accordingly.

    What kind of questions should I ask myself?

    Careful consideration to what each question means will make your results more significant. Try to not repeat your questions.

    • The MOOAT report needs to be carefully thought through and discussed before conducting a survey.
    • Do I need MOOAT to compute the results for me? or will I handle this part?
    • If I want MOOAT to compute the results, in which format do I want them? We offer HTML, PDF, PS, and DVI. We usually display the results in term of percentages or graphs and pie charts. Also, do I want the results to be 100% public? 100% restricted? or a combination of both? Do I want the user to be redirected to the results page upon submission or not?
    • Do I want the users to know how many users already took the survey upon submission?
    • Is it an open survey (no authentication)? or do I want to target a particular group and restrict them to one vote? In this case, we usually need to build a database of target users with their email. We then send each of them a URL with an authentication key embedded. This method is usually preferred to assigning password, as they will just need to click on the link from their email client for their browser to be triggered and pointed directly to the survey with their authentication marked with their results.

    What is the delay before the assessment actually start?
      The delay to prepare assessments will vary according to many factors that are addressed in the above questions. The time required can span from two weeks up to a month depending on the complexity of the survey, and the results needed.




    Copyleft © 1999-2006 MOOAT