IS428 AY2019-20T2 Assign JORDY NELSON SAMUEL
Contents
Overview
The 2018 dataset for the library survey has been used. In general, we are trying to get a picture through this visualisation of who uses the library, what they use it for and how well the library has been serving them.
The full visualisation can be accessed here. Through the visualisations, we aim to demonstrate the level of service the library provides to SMU as a whole, and to each position: Undergraduates, Postgraduates, Staff and Faculty.
Data & Preparation
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The data comes in 2 sheets: SMU and Legend. SMU contains all the actual responses, while Legend contains all the codes for the questions and responses. | ||||||||||||
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Upon importing the SMU sheet, we can see that while the legend and ratings are available, the actual questions are not. We must proceed to import the Legends sheet as well, but first, we must treat this data. Tableau does not like this format where every question has its own column, therefore we need to pivot it. | ||||||||||||
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We select all the columns from I01 to NPS1 and pivoted them into 2 fields as shown in the second image. This will allow tableau to manipulate the data easier when we build our likert scale and various other graphs. We shall rename 'Pivot Field Names' to 'Code' and 'Pivot Field Values' to 'Rating'. | ||||||||||||
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We can now drag in the 'Legend' sheet and inner join them by 'Code'. This will allow us to have the 2 columns, Item and Rating, that will enable us to plot our visualisations. | ||||||||||||
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In addition, to better evaluate the services the library provides, each question has been grouped into respective categories that evaluate the computer facilities, overall satisfaction, resource access, service and the space of the library. The 5 groups are Computer Facilities, Resource Access, Service, Space and Overall. These categories will help us to evaluate different aspects of the libraries' service.
The categories consist of:
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Demographics
Full visualisation here The primary audience of the survey is undergraduate students, taking up 79.92% of the survey's respondents. Postgraduate students are second at 10.57% respondents.
In proportion to the overall demographics of SMU, Business students take up 38.89% of the respondents, the largest among the other schools. Information Systems comes in second, with about half of Business's students at 14.75% of the total students.
Overall Results
For this section, the overall story will be referenced.
Service Scores
Service tab under 'Overall' story
The library maintains a high level of service across all domains, with above-5 (4 being neutral) scores across each category. Overall, respondents rated the library 5.72 out of 7, with the weakest category being related to spaces available at the library at 5.50.
The worst scoring item is 'A computer is available when I need one' at 4.47, while the best is 'I can get wireless access in the library when I need to'.
Visitation
Visitation and Frequency tab under 'Overall' story
Li Ka Shing is still the most popular library, with 86.55% respondents claiming to go there, while the Kwa Geok Choo Law Library is second with 13.41% of respondents claiming to go there. People who visited the campus frequently, on average, also visited the library, albeit at a slightly lower frequency.
Undergraduates
For this section, the Undergraduate story will be referenced.
Undergraduates are satisfied using their personal laptops in the library, but computers at the library are not always available.
Undergraduate Satisfaction under 'Undergraduate' story
Undergraduates rated the computer facilities when it comes to using their own laptops very highly in comparison to other fields, excluding their overall satisfaction. This indicates that undergraduates use the library as a study space for a good portion of the time they are at the library, as they have a strong, positive opinion of using their own laptops.
When it comes to the 'Computer Facilities' category, we can see that undergraduate students need access to the computers in the library, but may not always be able to get one. For the question 'A computer is available when I need one', over 30% of respondents answered negatively. With an average score of 4.48 amongst the group, the response is barely positive (4 being a neutral score).
In fact, amongst all the survey question, the availability of computers scores the worst, with the largest proportion of undergraduate respondents responding negatively. It also has the lowest mean score across all the questions.
Li Ka Shing is still the most popular library... except amongst law students
Looking at which library is more popular, Li Ka Shing is the definite winner. 85.63% visit Li Ka Shing library more often, an overwhelming majority.
Favourite Campus: Law vs Non-Law Graduates under 'Undergraduate' story
If we just look at non-law students, we now see that Li Ka Shing is an even more overwhelming majority at 91.44% popularity amongst non-law students. Law students, however overwhelmingly prefer the law library, with 71.65% preferring to visit. Proximity could be one factor, but could the difference be because of other factors?
We can compare law students' rating average over categories.
Law Students' Preference for Kwa Geok Choo Law Library under 'Undergraduate' story
While answers differ across the board, we can see that overall, law students are more satisfied with the Law library, with an overall rating of 5.81 vs 5.68 in Li Ka Shing. The most notable difference is Resource Access, with a 0.18 higher rating in the Law Library. Since law students need their own set of resources different from the other schools, it makes sense to say that the reason why law students overwhelmingly choose the Law Library is due to the access of resources it provides.
Resource Access is Everyone's Big Gripe
Resource Access Woes tab under 'Undergraduate' story
On average, access to resources is the second worst rated category among all questions at a 5.54 average. Drilling down into the questions for this category, the worst question is 'Information resources located in the Library (e.g. books, journals, DVDs) meet my learning and research needs' at 5.09 out of 7. So is there a mismatch with the libraries' provision of resources and students' needs?
Resource Access Frequency under 'Undergraduate' story
Let's take a look at the responses for the question, 'How often do you access library resources'. Law and Social Sciences undergraduates reported accessing library resources at a far higher frequency than all other areas of study. With the score of 2 being weekly and 1 being daily, law and social sciences students' averages were below 2 and the rest were above 2.
Taking Law and Social Science groups as the High Research group due to this increased frequency in accessing resources, we see that their average rating of the Resource Access category is higher than the other areas of study - the Low Research group. They rate it on average 0.35 higher than the low research group.
This means that for those who actually frequently use the library resources, they regard it better than those who do not.
Postgraduates
For this section, the postgraduates story will be referenced.
Postgraduate Students, on average, value the library more than the entire group as a whole.
Postgraduate Students Appreciate the Library More than The Average under 'Postgraduates' story'
Across every single category, postgraduate students rated the library as a whole higher than the entire group mean, as well as the undergraduate mean. The largest discrepancy present is in the Service category, where postgraduate students rated the library 5.89, higher than the total mean of 5.58 and the undergraduate mean of 5.52. From previous analysis, we tend to see that when a group uses a particular service more, they might rate it higher. In that case, let us evaluate how much the postgraduate group uses the library.
Postgraduate Students Visit Frequency under 'Postgraduate' story
Interestingly, if we look at the visitation frequency of postgraduate students vs the entire respondent population, we see that while postgraduate students visit the campus less (1.42 vs 1.20), they still visit the library at the same frequency as the whole (1.90). What this could mean is that postgraduate students go to campus to visit the library specifically more often than other groups in the study.
Postgraduate Students are one of the most avid accessors of the library's resources.
Resource Access under 'Postgraduate' story
With the exception of Faculty, postgraduate students were avid users of the library resources, accessing it at a rating of 2.17 as compared to the total average at 2.39 and the undergraduate rating at 2.41. If we take the 'High Research' group of social sciences and law, however, we get a very frequent rating of 1.40, almost daily for this group of people. Earlier when looking at the undergraduates, we found that law students access resources at a rating of 1.47 and social sciences at 1.98. This outclasses them both and speaks to how even at the postgraduate level, these two areas of study are still very resource and research intensive.
All in all, we can see that the postgraduate students seem to make more use of the library for its resources and not just a study space that the undergraduates seem to value more.
Faculty
For this section, the faculty story will be referenced.
Faculty members rate each category more extremely than other groups
Faculty Ratings under 'Faculty' story
The faculty rate each category very 'extremely'; they tend to assign very positive and very negative ratings for certain categories. For example, their mean 'Overall' score is the highest among any group (6.10). At the same time, for the 'Space' and 'Computer Facilities' categories they rate it very negatively (2.74 and 3.19 respectively).
If we drill down to the 'Space' category, we can see that compared to the other positions, the Faculty rates it overwhelmingly negative at 2.57 for 'I can find a place in the Library to work in a group when I need to' and 2.90 for 'I can find a quiet place in the Library to study when I need to'.
Why the low scores? This brings me to my next point.
Faculty members are in school more often than every position except staff, yet they rarely visit the library
Faculty Visits under 'Faculty' story
The Faculty are in school very often. In fact, at 1.12, 1 being 'Daily', the faculty are in school more often than any position except staff. On the other hand, the faculty visit the library the least amongst any position, with a mean score of 3.25, 3 being 'Monthly'. Close to 60% of faculty visit the library monthly, quarterly or never, with 15.4% visiting the library only quarterly.
Perhaps, then, the ratings given by the faculty for services such as the physical space and computer facilities are inaccurate; they are not low because the the space is bad or the computer facilities are bad, but because the Faculty simply do not use them.
Staff
For this section, the staff story will be referenced.
Staff members are the people on campus the most, but visit the library the second least behind the Faculty
Staff Usage of Library under 'Staff' story
Staff members, among all positions, visit the campus the most; at 1.09, 87.68% of staff are in school daily. In contrast, the staff rate their rating for the frequency in the libraries is 2.86, which means most staff are in the library once a month.
If we look at the ratings of the staff across the categories, we see scores that revolve around neutral; the lowest score is 'Computer Facilities' at 4.71 and the highest is 'Overall' at 5.77. Simply put, the staff are not the primary audience of the library; they take up only 5.23% of the total responses. Therefore, we can expect that their response is neutral, since they do not use the library often and therefore do not form strong opinions of the library and its services.
It can then be reasoned, then, that any 'trends' we see with the staff might not be actually present; the survey results could just be mindless clicking to finish the survey quickly.
