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University Library user survey
Frequently asked questions
- What is LibQUAL+?
- What are the goals of LibQUAL+?
- How will LibQUAL+ benefit our library users?
- Why was LibQUAL+ started?
- How was the LibQUAL+ survey conducted?
- What are the elements of the LibQUAL+ survey itself?
- How were participants chosen and invited to participate in the survey?
- How were the results by sub library analyzed and compared?
- How reliable are the results?
What is LibQUAL+?
LibQUAL+ is a suite of services that libraries use to solicit, track, understand, and act upon users' opinions of service quality. These services are offered to the library community by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). The program's centerpiece is a rigorously tested Web-based survey bundled with training that helps libraries assess and improve library services, change organizational culture, and market the library. More than 1000 institutions have participated in LibQUAL+, including universities and colleges, health sciences libraries, law libraries, and public libraries - some through various consortia, others as independent participants. LibQUAL+ has also expanded internationally, with participating institutions in Canada, the US, Australia, UK, and Europe. The growing community of participants and its extensive data set are rich resources for improving library services.
For more information: LibQUAL+.
What are the goals of LibQUAL+?
- The goals of LibQUAL+ are to:
- Foster a culture of excellence in providing library service.
- Help libraries better understand user perceptions of library service quality.
- Collect and interpret library user feedback systematically over time.
- Provide libraries with comparable assessment information from peer institutions.
- Identify best practices in library service.
- Enhance library staff members' analytical skills for interpreting and acting on data.
How will LibQUAL+ benefit our library users?
LibQUAL+ gives K.U.Leuven students and faculty a chance to tell us where library services need improvement so that we are able to develop services that better meet users' expectations. It also gives us an opportunity to compare our data with that of peer institutions in Europe and the rest of the world to examine the best practices of those libraries that are evaluated highly by their users.
It is essential that University Library will derive action lines from the conclusions of the survey to respond to the user’s needs and expectations. The sub libraries as well will take action on their level. See: Conclusion/Actions.
Why was LibQUAL+ started?
There is increasing pressure for libraries to move towards outcome-based assessment, instead of relying merely on input, output, or resource metrics. This pressure comes from funding authorities as well as users themselves. Outcome measures may show how well an organization serves its users; they demonstrate an institution's efficiency and effectiveness. LibQUAL+ is one of several outcome-based assessment efforts begun under the Association of Research Libraries' New Measures Initiative.
How was the LibQUAL+ survey conducted?
The implementation and planning of the LibQUAL+ web survey at the K.U.Leuven was coordinated by a LibQUAL+ management team, with representatives of the various sections of the University Library. The entire process went according to the standard procedures prescribed by LibQUAL+ and is documented in a Dutch report. Briefly, the planning consisted of a preregistration period (financial and organizational planning, creation of a management team), the registration period, the phase of planning (setup of the questionnaire, defining the population, disciplines and user groups, adaptation of several issues to the K.U.Leuven context and a communication strategy), the actual survey period and at the end the analysis, evaluation and presentation of the results.
What are the elements of the LibQUAL+ survey itself?
Following years of revision involving data collection from more than 200,000 library users, LibQUAL+ has evolved into a protocol consisting of "22 items and a box." The 22 items measure user perceptions of:
- affect of service - questions relating to library staff empathy, responsiveness, reliability, and assurance;
- information control - questions that address how well the collections, both electronic and print, support research, teaching, and learning;
- library as place - questions that focus on how well libraries meet the individual needs of users who study and research on site.
How were participants chosen and invited to participate in the survey?
The K.U.Leuven decided to conduct the survey on her own (partnership with the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) was not possible in 2008). All students and staff members of the university were invited to participate to the survey, with the exception of external visitors, members of the Association K.U.Leuven and alumni. Gathering the population data from several university bodies was not an easy undertaking.
In a next step the LibQUAL+ management team set up a communication plan (website, posters, flyers, blackboard messages, screensavers). Subsequently we invited everybody by a bilingual e-mail message to participate to the web survey (in Dutch or English). To stimulate the participation incentives were introduced (iPod, film tickets). Two weeks before the end of the survey period a reminder was sent. Overall, the response rate was quite satisfying (> 10% of the targeted popuation).
How were the results by sub library analyzed and compared?
LibQUAL+ produces a standard report in which the measurement is carried out in its overall performance. However, the default report did not provide specific results to sub libraries, disciplines (not quite the same as faculties) nor user groups. The default report also provides no direct insight into the performance of the library in comparison with other libraries that took the LibQUAL+ measurement. That is why we called on the expertise of Dirk Heerwegh, of the Faculty of social sciences of the K.U.Leuven, and this for 2 goals:
- international benchmarking, where K.U.Leuven is compared to a large number of foreign libraries.
- Internal benchmarking, in which the results of sub libraries, faculties and user groups are compared with each other.
How reliable are the results?
Statistical sampling must meet some basic requirements for scientific criteria. One of those requirements is that the sample should be made to the unintentional. This means that each unit of the research population has a calculable probability (> 0) to be included in the sample. In the implementation of the LibQUAL+ instrument at K.U.Leuven this condition is not met. Because we did not work with a protected online questionnaire. In practice, however, if the period of the study is large enough, the probability is very small that the target population is not contacted. The LibQUAL+ survey was open, of 24 October, 2008 to December 9, 2008. This provides for a relatively long period of time.
The LibQUAL+ instrument consists of 9 arguments to "Affect or service", 8 theses to "information control", and 5 theses for "library as a Place" to be measured. Although the individual theories were drawn up with the intention of measuring this general concepts, we needed to measure whether these items do this as expected. We can say that even in the case of a validated instrument in the past, and these assessments and good results have already been carried out, it is still possible that, in a private implementation of the measurements a problem has occurred. In addition, we can also say that in our case the questions were translated from English. It is possible that specific translations cause slight different meanings by which the Dutch version of the instrument is not valid, even though the English-language source is. That is why the test validity of the instrument is checked.
The evaluation was done on the basis of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). By this variant of the frequent used explorative factor analysis (EFA), we could attribute certain expected structures on the data and the extent to which the model fits the data.
In general, we concluded that the instrument is valid enough. This means that the results may be considered as reliable in the sense that the measuring instrument is measuring what really means to be measured.
