27th January 2013, 07:55 PM
Doug, just a quick note to say that I sympathise with your frustration. As someone who has helped designed a survey from scratch (DF Away work and travel survey), I know that it is a damn hard job to do on many levels, not least to not let your preconceptions write the questions, and steer the survey how you want it. It is hard to get it right for one type of worker/employer, and it is even harder to cater for the huge diversity of archaeologists and how they work and live. For the DF survey we ended up with about 70 question, and still there was some things we wanted to ask but didn't, and questions we wished we'd rephrased or added. We felt its better to get more in-depth results that can be really studied, rather than a 10 question approach, but we did put off many with the length and detail.
To have to take on a survey that has 20 years of data must be daunting -you have a responsibility to the past data, but also need to move with the times as the situation in the profession changes. A hard balance. PtP has some flaws, but it is consistent and that does really help, but new questions or sub-surveys may need adding. Getting the balance right is really difficult. To those who object to a 20+ years of survey results, the comparable %s of PtP, Invisible DiggersII and DF AWay Survey answers are all very similar, so maybe its not doing such a poor job.
I answered the PtP survey -it was sent to me as my details are on various databases- and felt that as a freelance illustrator, trainer, Digger, subbie, confined space specialist, database designer, PO etc etc that it didn't really fit me, but I answered as best I could, and used the Free Text Box to add some comments. Job done, less than 30 minutes. So I, who have about as complex an employment situation as any, managed it perfectly easily knowing that it wasn't designed for me specifically.
If anyone wants to try their hand building their own survey I -and I'm sure Doug- would be happy to help with advice, it can be very interesting thing to do and get some really good data with which to make a positive difference.
By the way, DF are about to launch a new survey -on CPD and training in UK commercial archaeology, its another long one, but will give detailed answers to what is going on. No it won't be perfectly applicable to everyone, that would need 400 questions, but there will be free text to explain your situation. We hope we will get the balance right and will be beta-testing the survey as we did last time.
To have to take on a survey that has 20 years of data must be daunting -you have a responsibility to the past data, but also need to move with the times as the situation in the profession changes. A hard balance. PtP has some flaws, but it is consistent and that does really help, but new questions or sub-surveys may need adding. Getting the balance right is really difficult. To those who object to a 20+ years of survey results, the comparable %s of PtP, Invisible DiggersII and DF AWay Survey answers are all very similar, so maybe its not doing such a poor job.
I answered the PtP survey -it was sent to me as my details are on various databases- and felt that as a freelance illustrator, trainer, Digger, subbie, confined space specialist, database designer, PO etc etc that it didn't really fit me, but I answered as best I could, and used the Free Text Box to add some comments. Job done, less than 30 minutes. So I, who have about as complex an employment situation as any, managed it perfectly easily knowing that it wasn't designed for me specifically.
If anyone wants to try their hand building their own survey I -and I'm sure Doug- would be happy to help with advice, it can be very interesting thing to do and get some really good data with which to make a positive difference.
By the way, DF are about to launch a new survey -on CPD and training in UK commercial archaeology, its another long one, but will give detailed answers to what is going on. No it won't be perfectly applicable to everyone, that would need 400 questions, but there will be free text to explain your situation. We hope we will get the balance right and will be beta-testing the survey as we did last time.