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Using
Opscan Technology in Survey Research
Gary
D. Malaney
Director/Associate Professor
University of Massachusetts
Posted July 31,
2002 Student
Affairs Online, 3 (Summer)
Are you still dispensing paper and pencil surveys either through
mail-out or sit-down administrations?It is still common for survey
project administrators to design surveys with a word processing
package, print the necessary number of copies, and dispense the
surveys to prospective respondents. When individuals return the
completed surveys, the data are typically entered by keyboard
processing into some kind of computerized database. For decades, this
has been an acceptable means of conducting survey research and
processing data, and this process still works just fine for
administering a few small projects. However, if you are involved in a
larger survey operation where you conduct several surveys per year or
a few large projects, you might want to think about investing in an
optical mark recognition (OMR) survey system, also called an "opscan"
system.
The technology of scanning answers into a computer from a printed
form has been around since the 1960s (Dillman, 2000). This technology
is used often for multiple choice tests in large undergraduate
classes, where students code their answers on common answer sheets,
which then are fed into a computer scanner. However, the OMR
technology allows for data to be imported into a computer from the
actual printed survey. This technology is typically used by
commercial survey research firms. In higher education, we see it
employed by most national survey projects such as the annual freshman
survey administered by the Cooperative
Institutional Research Program (CIRP) at the Higher Education
Research Institute of UCLA and the National
Survey of Student Engagement administered by the Center for
Postsecondary Research & Planning at Indiana University.
What many people may not know is that for about $20,000 you can
purchase the necessary hardware and software to design OMR surveys.
At UMass, we have successfully employed this technology for about 5
years. We originally purchased the scanner, along with some survey
design software, from NCS Pearson. Eventually, we decided that their
ScanTools® software was not very user friendly, so after
consultation with other small survey research firms, we decided to
purchase a software product called Bubble
Publishing® from Scanning Dynamics, Inc. This software is
much easier to manipulate; thus, survey forms are simpler to design
when using this software.
In our office, we make every attempt to control all aspects of
each survey project primarily for two reasons: We encounter fewer
errors when we have more control over all aspects of a project, and
the project is less expensive when we can use our own resources. With
OMR projects, we do everything except print the instruments because
each instrument must be printed perfectly or the data cannot be read
by the scanner. Outsourcing the printing jobs can be fairly
expensive, so lately we have been discussing the idea of printing our
own instruments. Of course, in order to print your own forms, a
high-quality laser printer is essential, and such a printer would be
another cost to factor into the overall expense of the operation.
Even if you pay for the printing of the forms, the OMR technology is
very cost-effective, because you can save hundreds of hours
(depending on the size of your projects) of labor for data entry
time. The actual scanning time is quite fast relative to hand data
entry. The scanner will process 50-60 pages per minute.
Working with OMR technology has been very cost-effective for us
and our clients. Although printing forms can be somewhat costly, the
time saved by not having to enter data via a keyboard is tremendous.
Even if you are paying student wages to enter data, keyboard data
entry is very time consuming and costly, especially for large survey
projects. Where it could take several minutes to enter (and verify)
the data from one survey using keystrokes, the scanner can read a
page every couple seconds. Also, assuming that many data entry
projects are probably not systematically verified, the OMR technology
should result in more accurate data.
Needless to say, clients appreciate lower costs, and they are
likely to conduct more studies if the studies are less expensive;
thus, some of our clients conduct studies annually. For instance, one
of our annual projects is the student satisfaction survey for our
dining hall operation. On specific days, students who eat in the
dining halls are given surveys that they can fill out while they are
eating and return when they leave. We are able to scan the
instruments easily (being careful to remove any food particles), and
our client can obtain the results very quickly. We =ave used this OMR
technology for several departments on campus including housing
services and the library.
Although OMR generally is very efficient, a newer scanning
technology has been developed. Dillman (2000) discussed this
technology in the closing chapter ("Optical Scanning and Imaging, and
the Future of Self-Administered Surveys") of his excellent book
Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method.
In that chapter, he highlighted the fact that OMR technology is
actually being replaced by a new "advanced scanning and imaging
technology" where each individual completed survey form is reproduced
in an electronic medium, so that the paper instruments almost never
have to be looked at again. This technology allows for optical
character recognition (OCR) where hand-printed letters and numbers
(in addition to check marks or "X"s) can be read. The big
disadvantage of this new technology is that is it much more expensive
than the OMR technology. Dillman indicated that the scanner alone
costs $30,000; although, he does predict that the cost will come
down. Until those costs are reduced, I would recommend weighing the
advantages of an OMR system.
References
Dillman, D. A. (2000). Mail and Internet surveys: The
tailored design method. New York: John Wiley.
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