Online Survey Results

Abstract

In summer 2001, the editors of this book conducted an online survey to gather opinions about what a portal is perceived to be in the context of higher education. Survey participants are listed in the Acknowledgments section of this book. The survey results were presented in a poster session at the EDUCAUSE 2001 conference and are summarized in Table 1 of the Introduction to this book. This appendix presents a more detailed analysis of the survey, including several items that were not included in the summary in the Introduction. The survey was made up of 18 statements to which respondents were asked to react, and six questions that respondents were asked to answer. Analysis of the survey results must be tempered by the fact that survey respondents were self-selecting. Most presumably had some interest in portals, and therefore likely had some familiarity with them. While survey respondents were in no sense hand-picked, they were at the same time not entirely randomly selected.