3rd April 2013, 09:32 PM
Hi Jack, thanks for the feedback, very useful. We did test the survey on several guinea pigs who work in markedly different areas of commercial site life to try and iron out any glitches, but obviously some things seemed fine but arenât when looked at from different angles. Youâve clearly thought about the issues and questions, which is great, and I hope you put these thoughts into the comments boxes. If youâd like to be added to our pool of beta-testers drop us a line, always good to have more.
Re: black and white questions, this has come up a few times, we tried to put free text comment boxes in wherever possible so you could add thoughtsâand flagged up the fact that they would be there. Its very hard to cover all options in multiple choice without hundreds of columns, and sometimes you have to keep things simple. The possible permutations of training are pretty much infinite, and the survey was long enough already so we couldnât put any more options in to every question, even when we felt it might be useful. We needed to get a balance between a 5 minute survey that wouldnât gather any meaningful data, and something that was bogged down in detail and questions that werenât relevant to most people, also bearing in mind that many people wonât actually read the questions properly however carefully you craft them. This survey has to be broadly applicable to everyone working on site in UK commercial archaeology âthatâs quite a varied bunch.
Can I ask why you think the pregnancy question (Q67) is loaded? As an aside Iâve worked on several sites with pregnant colleagues, or colleagues just back from maternity leave (and paternity leave) and would have liked some form of advice/training about how to discuss any requirements they may or may not have. As a supervisor, colleague or First Aider it can obviously be important to know -Iâve also worked on sites where people havenât told me (as their supervisor and FA) that they were pregnant , but where I had known through other âsourcesâ, occasionally a bit tricky when I forget they didnât know I knewâ¦.
Dino,
Thanks for the comment. Tool box talks are one type of 'training', many TBTs are indeed useless, but some are good and are relevant on future sites. What weâre looking at with this question is how companies record all the types of training and how it is documented, rather than the value of the training itself. Company A may spend huge amounts of time logging every snippet of training, but its employees feel they donât have the skills they need, whilst Company B does everything ad hoc and records nothing and the staff are happy they get the training they need. Which works better? Thatâs what we want to find out.
Re: black and white questions, this has come up a few times, we tried to put free text comment boxes in wherever possible so you could add thoughtsâand flagged up the fact that they would be there. Its very hard to cover all options in multiple choice without hundreds of columns, and sometimes you have to keep things simple. The possible permutations of training are pretty much infinite, and the survey was long enough already so we couldnât put any more options in to every question, even when we felt it might be useful. We needed to get a balance between a 5 minute survey that wouldnât gather any meaningful data, and something that was bogged down in detail and questions that werenât relevant to most people, also bearing in mind that many people wonât actually read the questions properly however carefully you craft them. This survey has to be broadly applicable to everyone working on site in UK commercial archaeology âthatâs quite a varied bunch.
Can I ask why you think the pregnancy question (Q67) is loaded? As an aside Iâve worked on several sites with pregnant colleagues, or colleagues just back from maternity leave (and paternity leave) and would have liked some form of advice/training about how to discuss any requirements they may or may not have. As a supervisor, colleague or First Aider it can obviously be important to know -Iâve also worked on sites where people havenât told me (as their supervisor and FA) that they were pregnant , but where I had known through other âsourcesâ, occasionally a bit tricky when I forget they didnât know I knewâ¦.
Dino,
Thanks for the comment. Tool box talks are one type of 'training', many TBTs are indeed useless, but some are good and are relevant on future sites. What weâre looking at with this question is how companies record all the types of training and how it is documented, rather than the value of the training itself. Company A may spend huge amounts of time logging every snippet of training, but its employees feel they donât have the skills they need, whilst Company B does everything ad hoc and records nothing and the staff are happy they get the training they need. Which works better? Thatâs what we want to find out.