Remark-able Story: Remark Office OMR Meets Challenge of Data Collection for Non-Profits
Submitted by:
Ronna Rowlette, PhD
Rowlette Research Associates, Inc.
Tampa, Florida
Ask evaluation researchers working with community-based nonprofit agencies about their greatest challenge, and they’ll answer "an easy and cost-effective way to get and process data accurately in the field."
Typically nonprofit agencies just can’t afford to pay the high costs associated with printing survey forms and analyzing data, and they certainly don’t have the money to outsource data collection. Evaluators have had to balance what would be ideal for data collection and analysis with what will really work with the nonprofit budget.
Ronna Rowlette has been able to overcome some of the time and money challenges for her complex data collection needs with Remark 5.0. This summer Dr. Rowlette used Remark 5.0 to evaluate a city-wide Summer Day Camp Scholarship program for Middle School students in St. Petersburg, Florida.
With 23 sites hosting day camp activities for 1300 children, the busy staff had little time for data collection intricacies. They created the pre/post test and satisfaction survey forms using Microsoft Word, printed them out (instead of paying $15,000 for preprinted scan forms), and scanned the completed pre/post tests and satisfaction surveys into Remark 5.0 for analysis. Aside from the up front cost savings, the other advantages of this method include:
- Test and survey results could be scanned directly into the database.
- Youth as young as 10 were able to complete the forms with few errors.
- The scanning process was easy and accurate even though some of the kids used neon-colored markers, drew faces on the margins, and crossed out mistakes with big "X’s".
- Because Remark 5.0 exports to HTML format, they were able to email reports, charts and statistics to the agencies quickly.
- Because Remark 5.0 exports to SPSS, Excel and almost any other format, they could perform all the extended data analysis they wanted.
Lessons learned? Evaluators cannot control all the factors in data collection (the kids used everything but food to mark their answers), but Remark 5.0 is an ideal solution for community-based data collection.
