The more I work with Group Mind Express as an on-line collaboration platform in daily activities with my clients, the more I appreciate the benefits it offers throughout the entire process and ...   more »

Assessment Snapshots -- Survey Graphing from GroupMindExpress 
                                                   August 2006

GroupMind Express is adding yet another capability to our collaboration platform. Our Survey tool now provides the option to show a circular snapshot view for all scaled questions. This is an effective method to make sense of a large set of questions as a whole. Colors give clear distinctions for high and low scores, and also indicate trends in score distribution. 

Many organizations or consultants use assessments -- whether of leadership behavior, 360 feedback, team development or organizatiional capacity -- to rate individuals or teams on abilities. A whole-view graph allows the subject (individual or team) to see combined results in relation to each other, to highlight areas of strength and weakness, and hence to make data-informed choices.  

Sectional scores show clearly, as do individual questions. Color codes distinguish relative value, which greatly improves your ability to see meaning in the results. Patterns for the assessment as a whole are easy to spot, leading to better choices from collective intelligence. 

Example:
In the example shown here, starting in the center you see an overall score, then 3 sections scores as the inner wedges -- one with a high score. Individual questions show by the same color code as the sections; the thin outer ring provides information for what percentage of votes fell in the lowest or highest scores. This gives a useful sense of the distribution (similar to a standard deviation, but with more information) and thus points to an upward or downward trend for some questions.

For example, look in the 12 o'clock area of the circle: you can see two yellow questions, but with green and red edges. These color changes indicate that although the overall average scores fell in the mid range, a significant percentage of raters deviated from the average, by falling outside of the middle score. (At about 4 o'clock, you see a green question with a red edge. This shows that although the average score was high, at least 20% of the raters rated this question below the middle score.)
The editor can set the score thresholds for color changes, and a separate set of thresholds for what percentage of voters fall in high or low categories.
By adjusting the thresholds to call out critical change points in the score patterns, the colors can highlight significant differences within the assessment results.