Procedural Timeline
The following information provides an overview of how to register for, set up, customize, preview, run, and close your LibQUAL+® survey. A more detailed description of the overall survey process is provided in the LibQUAL+® Procedures Manual.
- Register. Registration is available online at https://www.libqual.org/register/survey and is open year-round.
- Payment. Payment is due within 60 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.
- 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 email addresses for your population. You may survey the population or draw a random sample. A good source of valid email 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 https://www.libqual.org/dashboard. This area of the LibQUAL+® web site contains important tools with which you can manage your survey.
- Use the "Manage Surveys" web page. This web page contains the steps that you must complete in order to configure, 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 the Procedures Manual.
- Draw final email samples. This is best done after your institution’s most recent enrollment process is complete.
- Announce your survey via email. We recommend that your library director send a personalized e-mail message to announce your upcoming survey. See the Appendix 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 email to your sample group(s). Invite your sample group(s) to participate in your survey. See the Appendix in the Procedures Manual for a sample survey invitation.
- Send reminders to your sample group(s). We suggest sending 3–5 reminder email messages at 3–5 day intervals, to prompt users to take your survey. See the Appendix in the Procedures Manual for sample survey reminders.
- Complete the Representativeness page. The "Representativeness" section can be completed as soon as you open your survey, while you run the survey, or after you close the survey. You can opt to leave it blank by selecting the "representativeness questionnaire is left blank intentionally" option in your stage 4 dashboard.
- Close your survey. We ask institutions to close their surveys by December 9.
- Receive your results. Microsoft Excel data files, survey comments, incentive winners, and SPSS files will be available immediately after the close of your survey. Results notebooks (in PDF format) are generally provided within two weeks of your survey closing date. If you need more time to fill out your representativeness questionnaire, ARL will wait to run your results report until the data is complete.
- Complete the Post Hoc and Evaluation Questionnaires. These are available in Stage 4, after the close of your survey.