To assess our service, we decided to use paper survey to get information from patrons ‘on the spot’ in case they may forget or not have time to fill it in later. Since the purpose of a survey is to tap into people’s individual preferences, the method is most appropriate when personal information is required (Cassell & Hiremath, 2011). Due to the character of the service provided, that is very personal and allows that each user may have different expectations and experience, evaluation method by survey would provide the best answers as it will give qualitative data to work with. When creating a survey, we also considered that sometimes users provide overall positive answers for the service for various reasons (Cassell & Hiremath, 2011), so questions were divided to separately evaluate staff performance, use of other services or most liked or disliked parts of the service. Various types of questions in our survey like open questions, rating scale or choosing from the list gave an opportunity to collect both in depth information to address some details for the future and data usable for statistics for example, how many users would recommend this service for a friend. Also, we included an open question ‘is there anything else…?’ that would give an opportunity for acquiring any information that we may be not aware to ask or to individual to add it to the survey. This sometimes produces interesting and useful data on aspects of the topic that have not been covered or the researcher has not considered (Matthews & Ross, 2010) and will make our patron feel respected and engaged with the service provided. Finally, there are questions for gathering contact details from our patrons like name, telephone number, and email to have a further possibility for contact and promotion of the services.

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Bibliography:

 

Cassell, K. A., & Hiremath, U. (2011). Reference and information services in the 21st century: an introduction. London: Facet Publishing.

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Matthews, B., & Ross, L. (2010). Research methods: a practical guide for the social sciences. Harlow, England: Longman.

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