Raosoft, Inc. - Research and Development Projects

Project Description
The Army Personnel Survey Office (APSO), of the U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral Sciences (ARI) desired an integrated electronic application for surveys to distribute browser-based data collection instruments into several locations in the field. Distribution would be through any combination of web surveys, email surveys, Floppy Disk surveys, or LAN surveys.

The U.S. Army and their affiliated armed services have facilities in multiple locations (e.g., regions) that perform similar functions. APSO wanted the ability to create data collection templates for surveys to distribute to the field. At each location, this survey template would need to be tailored to their facilities' specifications.

In addition, this software was required to account for:

Tailoring the organization name for each distributed location.
Tailoring the organization departments for each location.
Creating custom questions for each location.
Distributing the questionnaire on the Web, E-mail, Floppy Disk or LAN.
Combining all received data into one project database.
Creating Standard Reports.
Allowing for in-depth Custom Reports that support querying sub-sets of the data.
Combining data from ALL locations or sub-sets of locations into one database.

Raosoft, Inc. Software Solution
With our point of contact within APSO, a structure for questionnaire shells was established that allows for survey questionnaires to be created with hooks into the GoWeb program. The GoWeb program was created as an integrated application to be sent to any location that uses the services of APSO.

First, a member of APSO creates a survey questionnaire shell(s) with the correct hooks into GoWeb by using the Raosoft InterForm program. Next, they distribute GoWeb to each desired location with the questionnaire file included. Each GoWeb recipient then has the ability to tailor the questionnaire(s), distribute the instruments, aggregate and report on the data.

GoWeb contains the following components and is designed for novice ease of use:

Create Survey: Survey administrators add local content to survey shells.
Data Collection: Create browser-based questionnaire distribution files in the following formats:
1. Windows .exe files
2. Windows web server format (.cgi)
Append Data: Combine collected data from the various distribution methods.
Database Tools: View/Delete project data in spreadsheet format and export data to text and SPSS formats.
Create Reports: Create Standard or Custom Reports, including queries.
Roll Up: Combine separate project databases into an aggregate database.

In addition, an administration application for APSO was developed to control some aspects of GoWeb. The Administration program performed the following functions:

Create and edit instructions used in each module in GoWeb.
Create and edit the Question Libraries.
Set access control to Data Tools, limiting access for some off-sites' ability to view, delete, and export data.
Set password restriction for Roll-up access across locations.

Benefits to Improve Productivity
With GoWeb, ARI's APSO now has a single application to distribute tailor-made integrated data collection survey packages to separate locations. Each desired location can input local information, distribute surveys and combine the data when collected. Distribution of surveys can be through web surveys, by e-mail, by diskette, or over the LAN. They can produce standard reports or create custom reports and combine databases collected at separate installations of GoWeb on an access restricted basis.

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