assessment-archives

The Carpentries Pre-Workshop Survey

2020-10-16


Welcome screen

Consent to Participate in Research The Carpentries Pre-Workshop Survey

Introduction and Purpose My name is Erin Becker and I am the Associate Director of The Carpentries. Thank you for volunteering to take part in our research study, which is about understanding the effectiveness of our workshops. To participate in the study, you will complete a short survey about your skills and perspectives related to our workshop content before and after your workshop. Depending on your location, the survey will be 16-18 questions long and will take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete.

Confidentiality Your responses will be recorded anonymously. Additionally, you will be asked to create a unique identifier. This identifier will be confidential to you and will help us compare your results with the post-survey. Your anonymous and aggregate responses will be shared with workshop Hosts, Instructors, Helpers, and The Carpentries Core Team for the purpose of understanding the learners experiences, improving future workshops and providing in-depth feedback to allow Instructors to reflect their teaching strategies.

Risks and Benefits There are no direct risks or benefits to you from filling out this survey, and no compensation. We hope to use these results to improve workshops for future learners.

Consent You are not required to take this survey to participate in our workshop. You may quit the survey at any time or skip any item other than those required to correctly sort your responses.

If you have any questions about the study, please contact Erin Becker, Associate Director of The Carpentries at ebecker@carpentries.org or eribecker@ucdavis.edu or Megan Welsh, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of California, Davis at megwelsh@ucdavis.edu.

If you have any questions about your rights or treatment as a research participant in this study or would like to provide input about this research, please contact the University of California at Davis’ Institutional Review Board (IRB) at (916) 703-9151, IRBAdmin@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu, or 2921 Stockton Blvd, Suite 1400, Room 1429, Sacramento, CA 95817.


Are you 18 years of age or above? *

What is the identifier for your workshop? It is in the “YYYY-MM-DD-sitename” format and is used in the URL for the workshop website or the Etherpad you used. Please copy and paste the workshop identifier into the text box below. *

(short text answer)

Which of the following workshops are you attending?

Please enter a unique identifier as follows: Number of siblings (as numeric) + First two letters of the city you were born in (lowercase) + First three letters of your current street (lowercase).

(short text answer)

Please indicate your relevant fields or disciplines.

What is your current occupation/career stage?

What operating system is on the computer you are using at the workshop?

How often do you currently use any of the following?

A specialized software with a point-and-click graphical user interface (e.g., for statistical analysis: SPSS, SAS, …; for Geospatial analysis: ArcGIS, QGIS, … ; for Genomics analysis: Geneious, …)

Programming languages (R, Python, etc.)

Databases (SQL, Access, etc.)

Version control software (Git, Subversion (SVN), Mercurial, etc.)

A command shell (usually accessed through Terminal on macOS or PowerShell on Windows)

Please rate your level of satisfaction with your current data management and analysis workflow (i.e. how you collect, organize, store and analyze your data).

Why are you participating in this workshop?

How did you find out about this workshop?

The next set of questions is optional. If you prefer no to answer a question, please click the down arrow on your keyboard, or scroll down to navigate to the next question. Please rate your level of agreement with the following statements.

Having access to the original, raw data is important to be able to repeat an analysis.

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5

I can write a small program, script, or macro to address a problem in my own work.

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5

I know how to search for answers to my technical questions online.

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5

While working on a programming project, if I got stuck, I can find ways of overcoming the problem.

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5

I am confident in my ability to make use of programming software to work with data.

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5

Using a programming language (like R or Python) can make my analyses easier to reproduce.

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5

Using a programming language (like R or Python) can make me more efficient at working with data.

Strongly Disagree Neutral Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5

Please share what you most hope to learn from participating in this workshop.

(long text answer)

In what country is your workshop being held? For online training, please enter the country you are located in. *

Demographic Questions Thank you very much for participating in this survey. We appreciate your input, which will help us to create a diverse, inclusive and welcoming event. The Carpentries seek to promote a scientific computing community that is an inclusive and welcoming environment for all. In order to further this goal, we hope to understand the makeup of the community and the experiences of individuals within it. The data from this survey will help us to assess the diversity of our community.

To which gender do you most identify?

How would you describe yourself? Choose one or more of the following groups.


Thank you screen

Thank you for completing this survey! Your input is used to improve our workshops..

We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. If we can help making learning easier for you (e.g. sign-language interpreters, lactation facilities) please get in touch with the workshop

Be sure to check out our blog, and follow @thecarpentries on Twitter.

Our long-term survey measures the impact our workshops are having on learners 6 months to a year after completing a Carpentries workshop. If you want to participate please click on the “Participate” button below.