Step
One: Planning Your Survey Project
A. Begin with the End in
Mind -- Uses for the Survey Data
The most
useful project is undertaken with a particular purpose in mind. What
information do you need to support your local prevention efforts? How will
having more information help you? There are many ways in which prevention
professionals use the results of the ADAS, PPS, ATS and the ADAS Core Measures
Survey (ADAS-CM). The following are the most common uses:
1. Working
Face-to-Face with Young People
Professionals who are coordinating or implementing prevention programs use the
information on a daily basis when working directly with youth. It is much
easier to talk effectively with students about drugs when you have reliable
information at hand.
2.
Conducting Needs-Assessments
Survey
results are used to complete formal needs-assessments. In some cases, the
survey results, combined with your working knowledge of the population and the
resources available, may provide enough data for this process. In other cases,
the survey will be one of a number of data-collection projects that contribute
to the needs-assessment. Surveying is a very efficient method of collecting
reliable information about your youth population’s prevention needs.
3. Evaluating Prevention
Programs
The ADAS,
ADAS-CM, and ATS have been used for years to evaluate prevention efforts. They
provide “outcome-based measures.” In other words, if your goal is to reduce
drug and tobacco use by high-school students, you will measure use-rates, do
your prevention activities, and then measure again to see if there is any
effect. These surveys also provide data about attitudes, so that you can
measure whether prevention efforts are changing young peoples’ perceptions about
alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. The PPS allows you to measure changes in the
presence/absence of risk and protective factors in students’ lives. It also
quantifies students’ experiences with violence. These surveys can be used for
“pre-post” testing or as a method to track trends over time. You should first
decide what your own questions are (for example “Does this prevention effort
affect Behavior A or Attitude X?”) and then make sure that our surveys include
specific items that will reveal the answers to your questions. Because our
surveys are based on scientific research in the prevention field, most
evaluators’ questions are addressed by the item we have included. If not,
however, please inquire about the option of customizing our surveys for your
specific project.
4. Educating Your Public
Most of
RMBSI’s reports include materials to help you communicate with your community.
These materials include an outline for giving public presentations, and overhead
transparencies or PowerPoint Presentations that go with the scripts. These
materials have been used for presentations to students, parents, school staff,
administrators, and communities-at-large. We also provide press releases, which
you can distribute if you want media-coverage of your results. You can also
order an additional version of your report results in a PDF file format to add
to your website.
5. Writing Grant Proposals
Survey
results provide a large part of the necessary fact-base for preparing grant
proposals. You do not have to be a statistician to provide accurate statistics
in your appeals for program funding if you use the ADAS, PPS, ATS and/or ADAS
Core Measures Short Form.
B. Decide Which of RMBSI’s
Surveys to Use
To request
an informational packet with sample surveys, send an e-mail message (including
your name, title, organization, complete street address, city, state and zip
code) to
info@rmbsi.com.
You also
can view the sample surveys on this site – return to the home page and click on
the survey names, then select the pdf files.
Carefully
read the sample surveys, and decide which of them will best inform your
prevention efforts. Also, consider the following guidelines:
If you are
looking for data on alcohol and other drugs, you will want to use either the
Adolescent or Children’s version of the ADAS – or perhaps the ADAS Core Measures
Short Form. The Adolescent ADAS should be given to students in the 7th through
12th grade, and the Children’s ADAS should be given to 4th and 5th graders. We
strongly recommend that you do not cross these boundaries, as both the surveys
and the data analysis have been developed based on developmental norms that
apply to either elementary or secondary students. We find that 6th graders are
sometimes located in grade schools and sometimes in middle schools, and their
behavior may resemble either 5th or 7th graders more closely. If you are
surveying 6th graders, therefore, you may select either the Adolescent or
Children’s ADAS, whichever you feel will be more appropriate for your needs.
The ADAS
Core Measures Short Form has the advantage of brevity. If gaining classroom
time for surveying is a problem, the Core Measures Short Form may be your
choice. It requires only 5 to 10 minutes for completion because it includes
only 14 questions. These questions were selected from the ADAS and PPS to
correspond with the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s recommendations on
“core measures”. They include use in the past 30 days, age of first use,
perceived harm, and perceived disapproval of ATOD use. (Note that all these
items are also included in the Adolescent ADAS). The ADAS Core Measures Short
Form may be given to students in 6th grade through 12th
grade.
If you are
interested in focusing your substance abuse prevention efforts, and/or you need
data about violence and victimization, use The Prevention Planning Survey. It
is always paired with the Adolescent ADAS and is not available as a
“stand-alone” survey. In fact, it is only printed in booklets that combine both
surveys. The Prevention Planning Survey is most appropriate for use with
students in 8th grade and up. It may also be used with 6th and 7th graders who
are taking the Adolescent ADAS. However, it may be difficult for young students
and/or students with below-average reading speed to finish the full eight pages
in a standard class period. Unless you can schedule a longer block of time for
the survey, you should use the ADAS/PPS only with groups of students who
are likely to complete the pair of surveys in a 45-to-55 minute period.
The
American Tobacco Survey may be given to students in 4th grade up to 12th grade.
It is available either as a “stand alone” survey or paired with the Adolescent
ADAS. If you wish to give the Adolescent ADAS and the PPS on one day, you can
schedule the ATS on a separate day by itself. Other schools may wish to use the
ADAS and ATS at the same time. Most students can complete the ADAS/ATS in about
35- 45 minutes. If you want to give the ATS to elementary school students you
can schedule it separately from the Children’s ADAS. The “stand-alone’ ATS
requires 10-15 minutes for most students to complete.
C. Decide Who to Survey
1. Decide
Which Grades to Survey
RMBSI
offers surveys that are available for 4th to 12th graders. Which of these
grades you survey is your choice. The most important suggestion we can make is
that you collect data that will serve your purpose (or several purposes).
Choose the grades you will survey because data on these grades will help you to
plan or to improve your prevention efforts and to measure your outcomes!
Consider
which students your prevention efforts are currently serving or are going to be
serving in the next year or two. If you are working in a single building site,
you may want to survey the youngest eligible grade as well as the oldest of the
grades at that site. If you are coordinating prevention and intervention
services for an entire K-12 school district, it’s probably desirable to survey
at least one grade in the upper elementary level, some middle school/junior high
grade(s) and some high school grade(s). This will help you answer questions
like:
“At what age
and grade-level do our kids first begin to show an increase in drug use?”
“At what
grade-levels are there changes in our kids’ pattern of use?”
“At what grade
level do we see the highest level of drug involvement?”
If you want
to be able to compare local results with national survey results, you should
include 8th, 10th and/or 12th graders in your survey, because these are the
grades for which reliable national data is available from the University of
Michigan’s Monitoring the Future study (for more information about this study,
go to
www.monitoringthefuture.org ). We include their national data in every
report we prepare on the Adolescent ADAS.
2.
Surveying the Whole Grade vs. Sampling Procedures
Whenever possible, we strongly recommend that you
survey all of the students in the selected grades who are present on the
day of the survey. The goal of surveying is to find out about certain behaviors
and attitudes within the community’s population of young people. To do this it
is very important to survey a group that accurately represents the whole youth
population. The best, most effective way to do this is also the simplest way,
and that is to survey all students in the selected grades.
The other approach would be to select a “sample” – a
portion of the students who will represent the total student population at that
grade level. Sampling may help you in keeping efforts and costs down because
you survey fewer students. However, good sampling procedures are rather
complex, and if sampling is done improperly, it leads to results that do not
accurately describe the population. In the long run, the cost savings will not
be beneficial if the survey results do not reflect the behavior and attitudes of
the whole student group.
If you choose to sample your students, it is very
important that the person or team who selects the sample is experienced and
knowledgeable about local demographics, sampling procedures, and statistics in
general. RMBSI’s staff can provide some general guidance, but a local
professional who handles evaluations and research for the school district, or a
faculty member in social sciences at a near-by university will know the local
population better. However, we remind you again that the best, most effective,
and easiest method of getting accurate survey results is to survey all students
in the selected grade level who are present on the day of the survey.
3. Decide
Whether to Survey Special Needs Students
The surveys
offered by RMBSI should be given under conditions that protect student
anonymity. This means that no one should know or see how any student answers
the questions. Some special education students may be able to read, comprehend,
and fill in the answer “bubbles” on the survey independently, while others
cannot. Only those students who can complete the survey by themselves, under
anonymous conditions, should be asked to take the survey.
D.
Additional Decisions in Planning Your Order
You will need
to order your survey forms and your reports at the same time.
1.
How Many Surveys Should You Order?
You should
order enough forms to survey all your enrolled students at the grade level(s)
you want to survey, unless you have decided to survey only a sampling of
students, or if you are using active consent. If using active consent, you may
wish to wait until you have initial responses from parents back and then order a
slightly larger quantity than the number of affirmative responses you’ve
obtained – remember that you may still get responses back up until the day of
the survey.
After you
administer the survey, return all forms, both completed and blank ones, to
RMBSI. Part of your billing will be based on the number of completed forms.
If you
survey your older students with the Adolescent ADAS and your younger grades with
the Children’s ADAS, be aware this necessitates separate Adolescent and
Children’s ADAS Reports.
2. How Many Reports (and Which
Reports) Should You Order?
Children’s
ADAS Reports are prepared from Children’s ADAS forms. Adolescent ADAS Reports
are prepared from Adolescent ADAS forms. Results from Children’s and Adolescent
forms are derived through separate analysis procedures and cannot be mixed
together.
Similarly,
the ADAS Core Measures Short Form results must be processed as a separate data
analysis procedure.
Many community
coalitions have Drug-Free Communities grants, which require the grantees to
collect certain data in a very specific format. We can provide a DFC Grantee
report if you have used the Adolescent ADAS or the ADAS Core Measures Short
Form. The DFC Grantee Report can be ordered in addition to other reports from
that survey type, or as your only report. The DFC Grantee Report can present
data from 7 or fewer grade levels.
If you are
surveying at only one school building, you probably need to order just one
report for each type of survey you use (i.e., Adolescent ADAS, and PPS).
However, if you are surveying at several school sites, you may want to order
separate reports for each site, and/or composite report(s) combining the data
from multiple sites. You should consider whether you want data by site, as a
composite, or both. Many districts have found that individual school reports
work best in increasing awareness and motivation to develop prevention programs.
In each
report, students’ responses will be presented in tables. The tables in
Adolescent ADAS Reports, ADAS Core Measures Reports, Tobacco Reports and
Prevention Planning Reports can have up to four columns. Children’s ADAS
Reports can have up to three columns. We cannot exceed these column
limitations.
Ordinarily,
each column presents the responses of students in a single grade, as in the
example below where column 1 = 9th grade, column 2 = 10th grade, etc.
|
Ever Tried Alcohol |
9th
Graders |
10th
Graders |
11th
Graders |
12th
Graders |
|
67% |
75% |
79% |
84% |
However, in
the following circumstances we may need to modify the typical column layout:
* If you
have fewer than 50 students in each grade, we recommend showing the responses of
students from two or more grades in a single column, as in the example below:
|
Ever Tried Alcohol |
9-12th
Graders |
|
77% |
For a
variety of reasons, we find it’s advisable to have at least 50 students reported
in each column used. If you have a very small student population, please also
ask about the option of ordering only an Executive Summary Report without a
Detailed Report.
* If you
have more than 50 students in each grade, and you are surveying more than four
grades with the Adolescent Form, we recommend ordering at least two reports
(even if all the students are at one school site). This way you will have the
responses of each grade level presented separately. Or you may opt to condense
the grades into the four column format in a single report (i.e., column 1 = 6th
& 7th grades combined, column 2 = 8th & 9th grades combined, etc.). This
however, will obscure information regarding the differences in drug usage from
one grade to the next.
3. Should
You Order Multi-year Comparison Reports?
If you have
used the ADAS in the last five years, we have your previous years’ data
stored in our computer files. If your procedures meet certain criteria, you may
choose to order a Multi-year Comparison Report in addition to your current
year’s Detailed ADAS Report.
A
Multi-year Comparison Report pulls the data from the Executive Summary portion
of your report, and compares the students surveyed in each grade level to
students who were surveyed in that grade previously.
A
Multi-year Comparison Report has a standard format, and can be created for a
standard fee if you are consistent in your surveying procedures. Consistency
means that you survey the same grades in the same schools each year that you
survey, and your reports for each of those years are ordered with the same
column layouts. Also the same school site or sites must be included in the
reporting that is compared across time. It is not necessary to survey in
consecutive years – multi-year comparisons can be created, for example, using
data from the four school-years 2000-2001, 2003-2004, 2006-2007 and 2009-2010.
However it is necessary to survey at least once every five years, or your older
data may be purged from our database.
If you do
not survey the same grades or the same school sites, or you do not order reports
with the same column formatting each year, the processing of a Multi-year
Comparison report will require special handling by our staff. In such cases,
there will be some additional hourly charges for the extra time, in addition to
the standard charge.
It should
be noted that a Multi-year Comparison does not reproduce the entire Detailed
Report format, but rather offers a summary of tables showing the changing
patterns of drug use. If you need to see particular details analyzed in a
format that compares two or more years, and the information you want to see
isn’t part of our standard Multi-year Comparison Report, we probably can run a
special analysis for you. Please call for an estimate.
4. Do You Need Special Analyses?
If you want
to receive any data analyses that are not described in these materials, please
call us to discuss your requests. We are often able to handle special orders.
E. Make Arrangements within
the School System
1.
Obtain Necessary Board or Administration Approval
Before
placing your survey order, you may need to get approval of the project from the
administrators of the school system and/or the school building sites. It may
take some time to present the information, allow people to digest that
information, and then to wait for the concerned parties to meet, discuss, and
make decisions. In many school districts this process takes between two and six
months, so it is wise to plan ahead. This step is especially important if you
are part of a community organization that is outside of the school system.
2.
Schedule the Survey Date or Dates
You will
need to discuss scheduling with the principal of each school building where the
survey will be given. There is no universally “best” month or time of day to
give these surveys, but you will want to consider the following factors:
(a)
Allow Enough Time for the Students to Answer All the Questions
Most students
need the following amount of time to complete the surveys:
o ADAS Core Measures Short
Form 5–10
minutes
o Adolescent ADAS
alone
20–30 minutes
o Children's ADAS
alone
20–30 minutes
o The American Tobacco
Survey alone 10-15
minutes
o Adolescent ADAS with The
American Tobacco Survey 30-45 minutes
o Adolescent ADAS with the
Prevention Planning Survey 45–55 minutes
(b)
Minimize Interference with Academic Schedules
Teachers who resent the interruption of their
classroom time will not be good for the survey process. Try to schedule the
survey when it is more convenient for teachers.
(c) Try For
High-Attendance Days
It is important to choose a day when high-to-average
attendance is likely. You should not survey students who are absent on
the survey-date later on, as we have found that this causes very serious
problems. Absentees should simply not participate in the survey. It is,
therefore, essential that you pick a date for each school building when as many
students are present as possible. Avoid dates when there are groups of students
away for field trips, sports events, etc. If there is a flu epidemic or major
storm that keeps 25% or more of your students home when you have planned to
survey, it may be best to reschedule rather than to proceed.
(d)
Consider the Time of Year
Recognize
that the date when you give the survey will affect the results to some degree.
We would advise you to view the survey results as a snapshot of the substance
use rates at a given time, and interpret them in light of these general
realities. For example, generally speaking, the older the students are, the
higher the population’s level of drug-use will be. This means that, as a group,
seventh graders surveyed in the spring will usually have tried more drugs than
seventh graders surveyed in the fall, but will have slightly lower use rates
than eighth graders. Also, if you survey within 30 days after a major holiday
or festival in your community, you may see a higher number of students reporting
alcohol and other drug use in the last 30 days. Nevertheless, the results will
be perfectly valid. They will be a correct representation of use among students
at the time the survey is taken. You can therefore survey at any time in the
school year, but once you establish a time, you should try to survey at the same
time of year in the future so that the results will be most truly comparable.
And, again, interpret your results taking into account the events that take
place at that time of year, which may affect drinking and drug use.
(e) Choose
A Time of Day or A Specific Course for Your Survey Time
Each
student in the grade level(s) selected should be surveyed once and only once, so
how classes are scheduled may determine what time of day the survey is given.
Ideally, it is best to survey every student in the building who is in the
selected grade(s) at the very same time – that is, during the same class
period. In the real world this ideal is frequently not possible. A very good
next-best plan is to survey every eligible student in the building on the same
day, but during different class periods. The least desirable method would be to
survey in a building on two or more separate days. This is occasionally
necessary, especially in schools with “block scheduling.” It is preferable, if
this must be done, to at least try to survey students who are likely to interact
with one another all on one day.
Some
schools select a course attended by every student in that grade, such as a
health class or English class, as the place where the survey is administered.
Other schools simply select a given time, and every teacher oversees the survey
in their room at that time. The advantage of this is that all students are
given the survey at once, and there is no opportunity for hallway discussions
about the survey to affect the way students approach the survey later in the
day. The disadvantage is that it may interfere with more teachers’ teaching
schedules, and the administration process may be more unevenly handled.
However, this is not necessarily a problem. Meeting with the teachers in
advance to explain the reasons for the survey and to go over the administration
procedures can help to make this system work effectively.
(f)
Consider When Students Will Take the Survey Most
Seriously
If you know
that students are more focused at certain times of year, days of the week, or
times of day, and more rowdy at other times, take advantage of that knowledge.
Select an administration date and time when you think students are more likely
to take the survey seriously and to answer the questions honestly. The first
day of school is generally not a good time, nor is the day after a major
late-night high school event like Senior Prom or the Homecoming game. All in
all, however, this is a common-sense issue. We can’t give you “expert” advice,
because these factors vary from one group of students to another, and your
professional knowledge of the kids involved will be most useful.
3. Make
Financial Arrangements
(a)
Calculate the Cost of Your Proposed
Survey Project
The cost of
the survey project will be determined by the number and type of surveys you use,
and by the number and type of reports you ask RMBSI to prepare.
We do not
charge for shipping unless you request a special “Rush” delivery, in which case
we will charge you. You are responsible for the shipping charges to return
surveys to RMBSI. Under normal circumstances, we issue invoices upon completion
of the entire project. Invoices are due 30 days from date of issue.
(b)
Obtain a Purchase Order
In most
school districts, municipalities and universities, Purchase Orders are used to
set aside the funds that will be needed for a project. Sending a P.O. is not
the same thing as sending a check – the P.O. simply guarantees that funds will
be available to make payment when the time comes. If possible we prefer to
receive a Purchase Order before we ship your surveys to you, but payment is not
expected until our work has been done. In some school systems the business
office will not issue a P.O. until the final invoice reaches them. In this
case, we will accept your order and ask that you sign a statement verifying that
payment will be made according to our contract terms. We will invoice you when
we complete the reports on your survey results.
(c)
Paying in Advance
In
situations where grant funds are used to pay for the survey project, you may
have a deadline requiring you to use your funding by a specific date. If so,
you may send pre-payments to RMBSI when you place your order, or during the
course of the project. We will provide you with an estimated amount to pre-pay,
and when the project is finished and the final invoice is calculated, we will
either refund any over-payment or bill you for the remaining balance due.
Step Two: Placing Your Order with
RMBSI, Inc.
1. Call
RMBSI at 1-800-447-6354 to place your order by telephone. We will talk
you through your order and decision-making process. You will not need to fill
out any order form if you order by phone.
2.
Print out this
Order Form (Click here)
(a) Fax
the Order Form and your Purchase Order to (970)221-0595
(b) Mail
the Order Form and your Purchase Order to:
RMBSI, Inc
305 West
Magnolia Street, #291
Fort
Collins, CO 80521
Step Three: Receiving Your
Surveys
A.
Shipment Methods and Time in Transit
When we
receive your order, we usually can ship your surveys out the following day.
Incomplete orders, orders with special shipping instructions, and orders
involving more than 5000 surveys may require additional preparation time.
Shipment will be made via UPS Ground Service unless you specify that you need a
rushed delivery. Transit times for ground service will vary depending on your
location relative to Colorado. UPS will deliver most “Ground” packages in the
continental U.S. one to six working days after they pick up the package(s).
To check the
exact transit time from our location to yours, you can
click here to go
to UPS’s website.
Warning, if you click this link,
you will leave the RMBSI website. You may wish to bookmark this page before you
leave, to ensure that you will be able to return easily. You should also be
able to use the “back” button on your browser to return from another site.
B.
Check Your Materials
When you
receive the shipment of surveys, you will need to open the boxes right away and
check that you have received the correct surveys and a sufficient number of
surveys. You also will receive instruction sheets, checklists, and an Order
Agreement.
Please go
through the Order Agreement carefully, fill in the requested information, and
sign the last page. It must be returned to RMBSI with the completed surveys.
There will be two pages of instructions for the
coordinator(s) of the project, one page for the teachers who monitor the survey
in the classroom, and one page that is to be read out loud to the students. The
coordinator will need to make photocopies of the Survey Administration
Instructions and the Instructions to Students. Each teacher who
monitors the survey administration will need a copy of these two sheets. You
also need to prepare checklists to track which classrooms have and haven’t
returned the surveys after the students take the survey. We provide these
checklist forms for you to use.
C.
Distribute Surveys and Instructions to Staff
Members
We recommend that you schedule a meeting in each
school building to go over the survey project with the staff members involved.
At this meeting you can distribute the instruction sheets they will need. You
may also distribute the surveys at this meeting. You also will need to give
each classroom one or two large envelopes (approximately 10” x 12”). The
envelopes should be labeled with the grade level(s) surveyed, the
school-building name, the school district name, and the name of the city/town
and state. Students will place their surveys in these envelopes when they are
finished, and the envelopes should be sent back to us. Labeled envelopes are
very important in helping us to identify where each group of surveys came from.
Step
Four: Parental Notification and Consent
Prior to
giving the survey, it is important to notify parents about the survey project.
A few parents may not want to have their children take the survey. This is a
right that needs to be respected. Legally, parents also have the right to
review the questions that will be asked before the survey is given to their
children. You should have a blank copy of each survey you will use available
for parents to examine upon request.
There are
two common methods for notifying parents about the survey and giving them the
chance to keep their children from participating. These are referred to as
“active consent” and “implied consent” methods. Active consent means that all
parents must sign a form giving permission for their child to take the survey.
If a parent does not return a signed form to the school, then that parent’s
child cannot take the survey. By contrast, an implied consent procedure means
that only parents who object to the survey sign the form and return it. The
form says “Please do not give the survey to my child(ren).” Parents who allow
their children to participate do not have to sign the form. By not returning
the “permission-denial” form, parents imply that they give their permission.
Depending on the funding being used, and the methods
used in giving the survey, certain laws may require a particular procedure for
getting parental consent. For a comprehensive discussion on “Parental
Consent Procedures for Surveying in Schools” click here
We recommend using an “implied
consent” procedure whenever possible, because it is easier, less expensive, and
generally allows you to survey a more representative portion of your student
population. Unless someone calls to remind the parents a few times, usually a
great number of parents will not get around to returning “active consent”
permission forms. However, recently we have been encouraged to see that a few
of our clients have organized their active consent process so well that they
have received responses from 95% to 97% of parents!
Researchers have done follow-up studies and learned
that for most parents, failure to return the consent forms is not due to
parents’ objections to the survey, but just because their lives are busy. On
the other hand, parents who really do not want their children to participate
usually feel strongly enough about it to take the time to return a form saying
“No, don’t give the survey to my child.” The clients who have successfully
obtained responses from 95% to 97% of parents had between 0% and .3%
of all parents saying no, which again confirms the idea that most parents who
will respond at all will respond affirmatively.
RMBSI will
provide support and guidance for either procedure you use in your community.
Sample letters for each procedure are available when you place your order. When
you order, let us know what method you’ll be using so that we can send
appropriate checklists and suggestions for a successful project.
Step
Five: Administering the Surveys
Teachers who are administering the surveys should
follow the instructions that are provided. The Instructions to Students
should be read aloud in each classroom. They should be read aloud exactly as
written, to ensure that students in all classrooms are given the same
information.
Teachers should allow plenty of time for students to
complete the survey. Cutting this process short will cause the worst of
problems. We recommend allowing a full class period, but teachers should have a
quiet activity ready for students to work on at their desks if they finish
before others. Most students need the following amount of time to complete the
forms:
o ADAS Core Measures Short
Form 5–10
minutes
o Adolescent ADAS
alone
20–30 minutes
o Children's ADAS
alone
20–30 minutes
o The American Tobacco
Survey alone 10-15
minutes
o Adolescent ADAS with The
American Tobacco Survey 30-45 minutes
o Adolescent ADAS with the
Prevention Planning Survey 45–55 minutes
Step Six: Returning the Surveys to
RMBSI, Inc.
After
students fill out the surveys, they should place them in the 10”x 12” envelope
with the other students' completed forms. Immediately after each class
finishes, the envelopes with the surveys should be returned to the survey
coordinator. Please make sure that each envelope is labeled with the grade
level surveyed, the name of the school building, school district, city, and
state. Unused surveys must be returned too. They may be included in the
envelopes with the completed surveys, or kept separate. The coordinator will use
checklists to make sure every classroom returns its surveys.
No one should read the completed surveys. Doing so
would violate the anonymity that is promised to all students who participate.
The coordinator will simply place the labeled, sealed
envelopes in a box (or boxes) to ship to RMBSI as soon as all surveys are
collected. No other handling of the surveys should occur. After the surveys
leave the students’ hands, the next person to see the completed surveys should
be a member of RMBSI’s staff.
The
coordinator should be sure to include RMBSI’s Order Agreement in the box with
the surveys. Before sending it, make sure that you have filled in any missing
information and signed it. The information requested in the Order Agreement
will allow us to begin processing the surveys.
Step
Seven: Reviewing Your Survey Results
You can
expect to receive your reports approximately 30 to 45 days after the date you
ship the surveys to RMBSI. This allows about one week for shipping in each
direction, and about 30 days for RMBSI to process your surveys and prepare the
reports. Because of the nature of our work, we cannot guarantee precise
turn-around times. However, in recent school years, we have shipped 95% of the
orders we processed in 30 days or less.
It’s
important to familiarize yourself with the results thoroughly before you begin
using them. We recommend that you make a list of all the people who should also
be given copies of the reports, and be sure to distribute copies to those people
soon after you receive them. RMBSI will treat your data confidentially. We
never release your data to any third party unless you ask us to in writing.
Sharing the results of your survey will be up to you.
The reports are generally self-explanatory, but if you
have any questions as you read, please feel free to call us or send us e-mail.
We will be happy to help you interpret anything that needs clarification.
As mentioned earlier, there are many valuable ways to
use your survey results. Return to the top of this page to review
Uses for
the Survey Data.
Step
Eight: Repeating the Survey Periodically
Survey results will be most meaningful and useful when
they are up-to-date. We recommend surveying on a regular schedule. Some
schools survey every school year, but many others opt for every other year, or
even every third year. We advise that you collect “fresh” data at least every
three years.
Adding
Multi-year Comparison Reports to your order after the second survey-year will
allow you to track changes in key data items across time. Up to five years of
data collection can be displayed in a Multi-year Comparison.
Be advised that we may
purge data files from our database if a customer is inactive (does not survey)
for 5 years. However, we retain paper copies of Executive Summaries and
Multi-Year Comparison Reports for a longer time, and it may be possible to use
these documents to create a new Multi-Year Comparison Report that includes data
from older surveys.