During the question-and-answer part of a presentation I gave at the 2010 Library Assessment Conference in Baltimore last week, I couldn’t resist editorializing about how bad convenience sampling is. One audience member spoke up, saying she felt convenience samples are legitimate as long as findings are interpreted as describing only the respondents, themselves. Later on [...]
Archive for the ‘Measurement’ Category
A Hard Row to Hoe
Posted in Library assessment, Measurement, Research on November 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
E Pluribus Unum
Posted in Measurement, Statistics, tagged aggregate statistics, bivariate data, generalizing from data, summary statistics, variation on August 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
This simple statement is one of several “myths” appearing on GeekTheLibrary: The busier the library, the more money it receives. GeekTheLibrary is concerned that the general public mistakenly believes libraries are funded based on how much they are used by patrons. Perhaps their concern is well founded, I don’t know. But the statement happens also [...]
Just Make Up The Numbers
Posted in Measurement, Statistics on May 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
My prior post about the library research report, Opportunity for All, reminded me that as simple as percentages are, they sure can lead into bizarre territory. Suppose the report authors had determined that in 1990 an estimated 200 Internet terminals had been installed in U.S. public libraries nationwide. By 2007, then, the cumulative percentage growth [...]
Skyrocket Science
Posted in Measurement, Reporting Evaluation/Assessment Results, Statistics, tagged charts, graphical data presentation, graphs, visual data representation on April 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I am still on my excellence-in-graphical-data-presentation kick. Insufferably so, I am afraid. As my Feb. 16 post mentioned, the principles of high quality graphical data presentation have been articulated by William Cleveland, Edward Tufte, Howard Wainer and others. Good graphing practice is based on these three rules: Be clear. (Strive for clarity. – William Cleveland) [...]
A-One-and-a-Two-and-a-Three
Posted in Measurement, Statistics, Uncategorized on April 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
There’s a goodly amount of good advice in the book What the Numbers Say: A Field Guide to Mastering Our Numerical World by Derrick Niederman and David Boyum (2003, Broadway Books). The quantity of this advice is sizable, considerable, hefty, copius, substantial, and voluminous. It’s a lot! But I’m more impressed qualitatively. Their message is [...]
Navigating with Fragmentary Information
Posted in Research, Measurement, Advocacy, Library assessment, tagged generalizability of findings, sampling, anecdotal data, convenience sample, statistical charts on February 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I have implied this in other entries in this blog, but I might as well say it outright: The library and information science profession needs to come to terms with the issue of standards for (i.e., rules of) evidence for performance, statistical, and advocacy research data. There, now I’ve said it. I recently read the [...]
Sawing with a Dull Saw
Posted in Advocacy, Library assessment, Measurement, Statistics, tagged history of public libraries, performance measurement, public library statistics on January 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
In spite of their evolution over the last few decades, accelerated most recently due to the Googlization of information, public libraries have been amazingly impervious to change in the arena of performance measurement. I found the following observations about library measures in the early history of American libraries: There is no branch of library economy [...]
The Telephone Game
Posted in Advocacy, Measurement, Research, tagged intepreting research findings, public access computer use, qualitative research, quantitative research, survey sampling techniques on January 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Readers of the, say, older persuasion may recall a time when children actually enjoyed games that required no peripheral devices, infrared sensors, or satellite tracking. There was one party game, simply called (I think) “Telephone,” where one player whispered a message to the next, and that player to the next, until the message was passed [...]
Thoroughly Modern Museums and Libraries
Posted in Library assessment, Measurement, Research on August 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I think I get it now. I had thought the term assessment meant a systematic and appropriately rigorous measurement of a construct or phenomenon of interest, like program outcomes, community needs, service quality, and so on. Only now have I come to understand that a self-assessment is a different animal altogether. Who would have thought [...]
Cha-Ching!
Posted in Library assessment, Measurement, Research on August 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I noticed that yet another library value calculator has appeared on the scene. This one is offered by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) with the very best of intentions, I am sure. But, let me say that I am convinced that these calculators are a bad idea. Their underlying assumptions are weak [...]
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