Data analysis

I had to analyse data form my Online Survey and Focus Groups.

Online Survey

I received a very good analytic report from Google Form giving some very nice pie and bar charts for the likert style questions and a lot of good information from the open questions, see Survey and Questionnaire Design post for more detail.

On the open questions I looked at the reoccurring themes, called coding, to see what should be included in the final elearning module, problems faced by new entrants and any other comments made. Please see Line Managers Questionnaire Analysis for more information.

[New Entrants evaluation]

 

Focus Groups

I ran two Focus Groups in all. The first was with New Entrants to see what they would have liked to have seen when they first started. The second was with middle managers to see what they would like to see included on the new module. As Focus Groups are Qualitative in nature most of the questions were open. There were a few closed questions, i.e. what time frame should Induction Training be done in?, but the majority were open.

I recorded the audio from each focus group that had to be transcribed. Due to family and work pressures I did not have the time to dedicate to transcribing the audio so I paid Transcription Puppy to do the transcribing. It was a little expensive but I found more productive uses for the time I would have spend doing the work.

On receiving the returned transcription I read through them, the first reading I had to go back to the audio as there were some missing bits, i.e. mark inaudible audio, and I deciphered most of them. I made notes on the transcription and read each one a few times. As with the survey results I coding the results to get the information I required.

I then wrote a report for each:

1. New Entrants Focus Group
2. Middle Managers Focus Group

 

Triangulation

When I had all the information analysed and coded I looked to similar themes that were emerging from the three sources:

1. Line manager survey
2. New entrant focus group
3. Middle managers focus group

This process is called triangulation, see post for more information. There was confirmation from the results that the current course contains information needed by new entrant. It also highlighted new areas that could be added to the course such as EU Institutions and Legislation.