Survey FAQs

LibQUAL+ Tools

Participant Lists

Procedural Timeline

Participants' Related Sites

Consortia Participation Information

Sample Screens from the Survey

Register. Registration is available online at http://www.libqual.org/Register/index.cfm and is open year-round. When you register, you will choose one of two survey periods in which you will run your survey: Session I (January to June) or Session II (July to December).

Payment. Payment is due within 30 days of registration. You can make payments in the following methods: (a) request an electronic invoice, (b) pay by credit card (we accept Visa, Master Card, and American Express), or (c) bulk payment arrangement via a consortium. Please contact the LibQUAL+™ team at libqual@arl.org in advance to arrange a bulk payment for your group members.

Read the LibQUAL+™ Procedures Manual.The LibQUAL+™ Procedures Manual provides survey participants with a detailed description of the overall survey process.

Plan to attend the LibQUAL+™ Introductory Workshop and Results Meeting. These events are usually held in conjunction with the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference in January and June, respectively. For more information on these events, see http://www.libqual.org/Events/index.cfm.

Obtain IRB approval. If your institution requires you to get IRB approval to participate in the LibQUAL+™ survey, you should initiate this step as early as possible.

Identify a data source for your e-mail sample. Your goal is to identify a source of valid e-mail addresses for your population. You may survey the population or draw a random sample. A good source of valid e-mail addresses may be your campus computing office, administrative records, or library patron database.

Familiarize yourself with the survey Management Center. The Management Center is online at http://www.libqual.org/Manage/index.cfm. This area of the LibQUAL+™ web site contains important tools with which you can manage your survey.

Use the "Manage Your Survey" web page. This web page contains the eight steps that you must complete in order to set up, preview, run, and close your survey. New steps will open for you to complete as you move through the survey process. For a complete explanation of this section, including the information that you will be asked to provide in each step, see pages 36-47 in the Procedures Manual.

Draw final e-mail samples. This is best done after your institution’s most recent enrollment process is complete.

Announce your survey via e-mail. We recommend that your library director send a personalized e-mail message to announce your upcoming survey. See Appendix B in the Procedures Manual for a sample survey notification announcement.

Adjust your sample groups. Based on your feedback from the survey announcement, adjust your e-mail sample groups as needed (i.e., replace invalid e-mail addresses with valid ones.)

Send an e-mail to your sample group(s). Invite your sample group(s) to participate in your survey. See Appendix C in the Procedures Manual for a sample survey invitation.

Send reminders to your sample group(s). We suggest sending 3-5 reminder e-mail messages at 3-5 day intervals, to prompt users to take your survey. See Appendix D in the Procedures Manual for a sample survey reminders.

Complete the Representativeness page. The "Representativeness" section must be completed before you close your survey.

Close your survey. You may either close your survey manually on the Monitor Survey Progress page, or you may wait for the ending date of the survey session, at which time all remaining open surveys will be closed.

Receive your results. Results notebooks (in PDF format) and Microsoft Excel data files are generally provided within 1-2 weeks of your survey closing date. SPSS data files are provided a couple of months after the survey session is complete.

Complete the Post Hoc and Evaluation Questionnaires. These are the last two steps in the Survey Management Area.

Consider attending other LibQUAL+™ workshops. Additional workshops are offered to survey participants throughout the year. For information on these events, go to http://www.libqual.org/Events/index.cfm.