RSS Moves, a New Era Begins

The Research and Statistical Support office has moved!!! Beginning October 25, we will be working at our new offices in ISB 122 and 124. The phone numbers, however, remain the same: 565-4066 for Karl Ho and 565-2140 for Rich Herrington and Craig Henderson. We hope the new locations will enhance our consulting and other services to the research community on campus. Drop by and see our new rooms.

New Short Courses

Yes, we are headed to uncharted territory in exploring and providing new services. In November, we will provide a new series of short courses regarding survey research. Two classes, titled "New Technologies for Survey Research I & II", will introduce researchers to new ideas and technologies in conducting and administering surveys.

The first class focuses on developing a Web survey and the corresponding procedures in processing and analyzing data collected from Internet surveys. In this three-hour class we will cover the techniques of generating a Web survey using Microsoft FrontPage and formatting the variables for direct data-entry, i.e. the data need not be entered manually and will be ready to use once data are collected. Since it involves quite intensive use of FrontPage and one of our statistical packages, SPSS or SAS, we require you to take a Microsoft FrontPage class and one of our statistical application classes before attending this workshop (or have equivalent experience with that software). If you want to take this opportunity to launch your new survey on the Web, please contact us in advance so we can help you in this endeavor.

The second part of the series, another three-hour class, will cover a new application we recently acquired at the Computing Center -- TeleForm Designer. TeleForm Designer is a very well regarded questionnaire designing package. It helps researchers construct professional questionnaires with embedded features that facilitate data entry using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Employing high-speed scanner and questionnaires designed by TeleForm Designer, we can significantly expedite the data entry process and shorten the turn-around time. It is recommended registrants of this class be familiar with the survey research methodology or have enrolled in survey research classes prior to attending this workshop. The schedules for these two class are as follows (click here for other ACS short courses):

New Technologies for Survey Research I -- First in a two part series, this course aims to introduce researchers to new technologies for conducting and administering surveys. This course will focus on creating Web surveys using FrontPage and SPSS or SAS for data analysis. Topics include how to achieve the best response rate; how to minimize invalid entries and missing values; designing single- and multiple-response questions; and developing routines for reading data. Before taking this course, students should take or understand the concepts covered in "Introduction to SPSS Programming," or "Introduction to SAS Programming," and "Creating a Web Page with Microsoft FrontPage." Bring an empty, DOS-formatted 3.5" diskette so you can save your in-class work.

One three-hour session, held in the Eagle Student Services Lab (ESS 152):

Date

Time

Instructor

Tuesday, November 9

2-5 p.m.

Karl Ho

New Technologies for Survey Research II -- Second in a two part series, this course will emphasize the design of hardcopy questionnaires using new optical scanning technology. Topics include how to design scannable questionnaires; converting old questionnaires to scannable forms or Web surveys; and redesigning multi-channel surveys. Before selecting this course, students should complete the "New Technologies for Survey Research I " or have previous experience with and/or understanding of the topics covered there. Bring an empty, DOS-formatted 3.5" diskette so you can save your in-class work.

One three-hour session, held in the Eagle Student Services Lab (ESS 152):

Date

Time

Instructor

Tuesday, November 16

2-5 p.m.

Karl Ho

Mainframe Application Support

If you are doing your research using mainframe applications, please be aware that support for the CMS version of SPSS has been discontinued as of October 1. For more details, read Dr. Baczewski's earlier article in Benchmarks Online.

SPSS for MVS, on the other hand, is still functional. We are still pending a patch from the company to render the software Y2K compliant. It is recommended that users of SPSS for MVS do the following to ensure their research projects will not be interrupted should there be a further delay of the release date:

Store all SPSS data in portable file format (using the EXPORT OUTFILE command in SPSS) for backup purposes; and
Download SPSS portable files from MVS to local disk. Click here on How to Download Files from MVS? Be reminded that only in portable file format can the data files be read in other versions of SPSS on other platforms (such as UNIX). Raw data files can be transported but require customization of the DATA LIST program to read in the data.
Be ready to do analysis on other operating systems such as SPSS 9.0 for Windows and SPSS 6.1 for UNIX).

We have a series of sample programs on our FAQ list created to help smooth the process. Click here to check our FAQ list.

Software Update

To my surprise (maybe yours too), we don't have much news from our software vendors. SPSS has announced its release of version 10 but we probably will not receive it until December, maybe in 2000. SAS has consolidated its Nashville project and released the developer's release of version 8, which should be available in most General Access Labs. We are still working on the new student version release and hope to have all the paperwork done soon. If all goes well, the software should be available in the UNT Bookstore next month. S-Plus 5.1 for UNIX is already up and running on sol.

The journey to the new millenium has started, well before that magic moment really comes. For us, it is a moment that "warps" us to a new generation. So, behold, boldly go where no man has gone before. Bon Voyage.

Karl