Manged Online Employee Survey Hosting
Lock Media has developed a comprehensive employee Survey Solution for managing and hosting web based surveys. One of the organizations to deploy the survey solution, through Lock Media's managed hosting services, is the Ethics Resource Center. Founded in 1922, the Ethics Resource Center is America's oldest non-profit organization devoted to the advancement of high ethical standards and practices in public and private institutions. For 85 years, ERC has been a resource for institutions committed to a strong ethics culture.
In November 2004, Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations were revised to include "periodic measurement of program effectiveness" among the criteria for an effective ethics and compliance program (U.S.S.G. §8B2.1(b)(5)(B)). This change in federal regulations created the need for a streamlined web based survey management system for building and managing online surveys. Lock Media has developed a comprehensive employee Survey Builder software application and web based hosting solution to meet this critical need.
Survey Builder Setup
The Survey Builder application for the Ethics Resource Center uses a SQL Server 2005 database with an ASP 3.0 front end running on Microsoft IIS to generate, run and administer a series of questions to a web user. The logic behind a survey is almost identical to that behind a test: Ask the user a question and present a series of possible answers. Record the user's answer in the database and continue. The only real difference between the two concepts is that tests have the concept of a correct answer while surveys don't.
The Survey Builder application is a highly scable solution that is able to manage very large complex surveys from 1,000 - 1,000,000+ users in any language. Our ability to simplifiy the production and administration of online surveys is what sets our solution apart from others in the survey industry.
Easy for Administrators
Survey Builder offers its administrators the ability to associate a question with a core metric -- a basic concept that remains the same even if the wording of the question changes a little bit from survey to survey. This allows comparisons between different surveys (or tests) even if things like the wording, user language, and question order and user environment change.
Survey Builder is designed to support multiple languages with an easy to use interface for end users. In addition to multiple languages, the Survey Builder application has the ability to support unlimitted branching of questions based user responses and unlimitted number of metrics.
Once the administrators build the survey by creating the survey-specific wording for questions, setting the question order and (optionally) determining which questions to branch / jump past based on user response -- all via web forms; no programming or HTML ability is required -- the survey is published automatically: The necessary database tables are generated with indexes and default values, the URL is set up on the web server and the individual ASP pages are created (in multiple languages, if the administrators enter translated questions as well as English).
Survey Builder Dashboard - Manage several surveys at once
The Survey Builder deployment basically runs itself, there is an automated email invitation system for managing the survey invites. Users log in at any time and complete the survey when it's convenient for them. Answers are stored as the users submit them, in addition to the date and time of an answer and how long the user spent deciding on their response. Users are not required to finish in one sitting: If they leave and log in again later they are directed to the point at which they exited the survey previously.
When the expiration date arrives, new users are prevented from logging in while currently logged-in users are allowed to finish if they want, until their sessions expire (after 20 minutes of inactivity). At any point in the survey an administrator can log in and view the dashboard, containing information about the number of users who have logged in, how many have completed the survey, how many are taking the survey at that moment and which questions users tend to leave after. The last is valuable since it can point to trends that may indicate a poorly-phrased question, allowing the survey to essentially "grade" itself for the administrators to use the next time they set one up.
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Administrators can also view real-time answer stats, showing up to the minute response rates for every question (i.e. 30 people out of 95 have answered "I don't know" to question 2).
This is presented in a compact layout that shows both exact numbers, bar charts , pie charts, and grid responses to aid in decision making and planning information for primary stake holders. This level of transparency into the survey process while it's being administered can save valuable time and resources in eliminating issues that could in-validate surveys that do not have this level of real time analysis.
Survey Builder Offline - Managing Paper Based Surveys
Coupled with the Survey Builder online system, Lock Media also created an integrated solution for managing the surveys that need to be done in paper based formats. It is typical in large organization to have a need for both the online surveys and off-line paper based surveys. The ability to accurately build and processes those paper surveys with electronic scanning for merging results into the online database is critical.
The OMR capability is unique in that forms do not require any registration marks or drop-out inks (special printing). Because of this, you have complete flexibility over how the form is set up and where the marks are located. In order for the OMR system to read a form, users go through a simple "training" process to show the software how to read the form. The result is a template file that can be used over and over to process forms. It is a simple procedure where the user scans a form, the software displays the image of the form, and with the mouse, the user drags "boxes" around the areas of marks and fills in some information about these areas (defines what each mark should translate into if filled in).
At this point the paper based survey can be lined-up with the question set from the online version to create an integrated solution for managing the paper based and web based surveys as one survey program. Lock Media's integrated solution quickly and accurately solves this vital need and completes the entire survey process under one central application.
Survey Builder Hosting - Managed Data Center
The entire Survey Builder solution is setup and managed at Lock Media's data center. The data center has complete 24x7 support, 99.9% guaranteed up time, on site and off site backup and full electric power generator back up in the event of power grid failure. Lock Media's location and availability to the Internet Backbone networking allows it to maintain a scalable solution built around a growing user base. Bandwidth can be dedicated from a single T1 up through a full OC3 connection as systems scale out to support additional users and clients.
The Survey Builder web application is available to our clients for managing and administering online surveys. These surveys can be in any industry or field of study such as Health Care, Education, Human Resources, any area of research that requires the need to ask questions. If your interested specificly in Ethics Related Compliance and Benchmarks contact the Ethics Resource Center at www.ethics.com.
If your interested in learning more please contact us today!
