4.3.1.2 Forms of questions
Fink and Kosecoff (1998: 9) explain that survey questions may be forced choice or open-ended. Newell (1993: 101-103) also distinguishes between two types of questions commonly used in questionnaires. These are closed and open questions.
Both types were used in the study.
choice questions with several choices, are easier to score than open-ended, short answer, essay questions. Open-ended questions give the respondent an opportunity to state a position in their own words. Unfortunately, these words may be difficult to interpret and for this reason constant analysis can be labour intensive.
4.3.2 Pre-testing the questionnaire
Powell (1997) stresses the importance ofpre-testing a questionnaire:
A pretest gives the researcher an opportunity to identify questionnaire items that tend to be misunderstood by the participants, do not obtain the information that is needed etc .... The pre- test offers certain advantages beyond helping to refme the data collection instrument. Itcan permit a preliminary testing of the hypothesis, point out a variety of problems not anticipated relating to design and methodology, facilitate a practice run of the statistical procedures to be used, and perhaps even indicate that the fmal study may not produce any meaningful results and therefore should be rethought or abandoned.
4.3.2.1 Population for the pre-test
The instrument was pre-tested on three lecturers from the Information Studies Discipline at the School of Human and Social Studies, University of Natal Pietermaritzburg, to examine the clarity, content validity, and relevance of the questions. These lecturers were chosen because they were all professional librarians who worked at an academic institution.
4.3.2.2 Administering the pre-test
The questionnaire was sent via e-mail on the 20 of June 2002 to the lecturers. The pre-test population was given two weeks from this date to complete the questionnaire.
A reminder was sent out towards the end of the first week. All three lecturers pre- tested the questionnaire, and mailed a printed copy to the researcher.
4.3.3 Changes resulting from the pre-test
Minor changes, in the form of spelling and grammatical errors in the cover letter and questionnaire, were corrected before the questionnaire was administered on the target population.
4.3.4 Administering the questionnaire
Once the design of the questionnaire has been completed and checked, a copy of the covering letter (see Appendix 2) and the questionnaire (see Appendix 1) were mailed to all the members of the population using the lists of names and addresses that were obtained from the deputy librarians of the Universities of Durban-Westville, Natal Durban and Zululand on the 5 July 2002. Since the researcher is a subject librarian at the University of Natal Pietermaritzburg Library it was not necessary to obtain the names and addresses of the other subject librarians at the University of Natal
Pietermaritzburg Library. The cover letter explained the purpose of the study briefly, while the front page of the questionnaire included the instructions on how to complete the questionnaire. Italso requested recipients to complete the questionnaire and return it to the researcher by 2 August 2002 or earlier if possible, using the self- addressed envelope provided for this purpose.
Fortunately, the internal mailing service between the University of Durban-Westville and the University of Natal, Durban and Pietermarizburg campuses, allowed
respondents to return the completed questionnaires via the internal mail service. The University of Zululand respondents, where given a stamped self-addressed envelope and therefore had to return their completed questionnaires via the regular postal services.
The response rate was initially low and only 17 questionnaires were completed and returned by the due date. Therefore, the researcher extended the deadline for
completing the questionnaire by one week to 9 August 2002. Of the 43 questionnaires that were sent out 31 were returned, yielding a response rate of
72.1 %.
4.4 Data analysis
Inthis study the methods for data analysis were determined by the type of data collected, the purpose for which the study was conducted, and to meet the objectives.
A coding key was prepared in which numerical values were assigned to all limited answer options in the questionnaire. The data was entered on a data matrix designed using SPSS2. The data relating to limited option questions was then processed in terms of frequency counts and percentages.
Content analysis was used to interpret the responses to open questions. Gay (1976:
137) describes content analysis as the systematic, quantitative description of the composition of the object of the study and he distinguished between simple content analysis involving frequency counts and more complex analysis that might be used to investigate bias in a text.
The data is presented in Chapter 5 in both quantitative form using descriptive statistics and qualitative form.
4.5 Evaluation of the method used
The validity of a study refers to its ability to measure what it sets out to measure (Newell 1993: 99). A factor that should be taken into account when considering the validity of a study is sensitivity (Newell 1993: 106-107) which leads to respondents over-reporting what they perceive as desirable behaviours. This has to be considered as a distinct possibility because most of the subject librarians know the current value placed on lCT knowledge and skills in librarianship. Gathering data from a small population by means of a postal questionnaire that has to be completed by individuals who have no way of verifying whether their understanding of a question is what the researcher intended, may seem inferior to other data gathering techniques such as interviews.
2 SPSS used to be called the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. However, the name of the product is no longer viewed as an acronym, and is now simply 'SPSS' (London 2002). The
However, a lack of understanding of the questions asked by the questionnaire, also indicated a low level of ICT knowledge and skill on the part of respondents. As far as the reliability of the study is concerned, its ability to obtain similar results if the same questions and a similar population were used (Newell 1993: 99) could be tested. It would be feasible to administer the questionnaire to other librarians throughout South Africa, because the questionnaire was designed around an international standard, the ICDL.
4.6 Summary
The need to gain pertinent information about the ICT knowledge and skills ofthe subject librarians resulted in a data gathering strategy consisting of a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire has been described in this chapter and evaluated.