The Development of Practical Guidelines for Designing Online Questionnaires

Questionnaires are an inexpensive way to gather data from a potentially large number of respondents. However, it is a long and effort consuming process to conduct the survey manually. As the popularity of the Internet increases, online survey creation software allows an access to individuals in distant locations, the ability to reach difficult to contact participants, and the convenience of having automated data collection, which reduces researcher time and effort. The aim of this study is to develop an Online Questionnaire Builder (OQB), which is an online survey software package to streamline and simplify the entire survey process from design of the questionnaire to the presentation of the results. OQB consists of an intuitive wizard interface for creating surveys, tools for distributing the surveys and analyzing the results. This paper presents the results of our preliminary study. By studying wide numbers of existing surveys, we came up with practical guidelines that should be met before a questionnaire can be considered a sound research tool. The guidelines presented in terms of structure, layout, navigation, formatting, response format and question types. It is expected, with the specified guidelines, OQB will be a useful and automated online application for creating and distributing surveys for the use of researchers or any scholars

An Open Source Web Service For Registering And Managing Environmental Samples

Records of environmental samples, such as minerals, soil, rocks, water, air and plants, are distributed across legacy databases, spreadsheets or other proprietary data systems. Sharing and integration of the sample records across the Web requires globally unique identifiers. These identifiers are essential in order to locate samples unambiguously and to manage their associated metadata and data systematically. The International Geo Sample Number (IGSN) is a persistent, globally unique label for identifying environmental samples. IGSN can be resolved to a digital representation of the sample through the Handle system. IGSN names are registered by end-users through allocating agents, which are the institutions acting on behalf of the IGSN registration agency. As an IGSN allocating agent, our goal is to implement a web service based on existing open source tools to streamline the processes of registering IGSNs and for managing and disseminating sample metadata. In this paper, we present our ongoing work on the design and development of the web service, and its data schema and database model for capturing key aspects of environmental samples. We show how existing controlled vocabularies can be incorporated into the service development to support the metadata registration of different types of samples. The proposed sample registration and curating approach has been trialed in the context of the Capricorn Distal Footprints project on a range of different sample types, varying from water to hard rock samples. The initial results demonstrate the effectiveness of the service while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to various media types, which is critical in the context of a multi-disciplinary project

A Context Aware Framework for User Centered Services

In this paper, we introduce a context aware middleware framework that has been developed over the years to serve as an enabler for user centered services. Firstly, we will discuss about a sensory API mechanism developed to allow an abstraction of sensing elements to report information in a structured manner. We will then proceed to discuss how this sensed information is represented in an ontology, replicating a virtual model of the environment. This will facilitate reasoning capabilities, where entities that are inter-related can be resolved and used by the service. And finally we will describe how context specific to a user-centered service could be subscribed from the middleware. The context, once subscribed, will enable actions to be fired off when the particular context is met. The three core components when put together, will allow for services to react more specific to the users needs, based on the user’s ever changing context

The Implementation Of Questionnaires Design Principles Via Online Questionnaire Builder

Online Questionnaire Builder (OQB) is web-based survey software that provides complete set of tools for users to conduct the overall survey process from questionnaire design and distribution to the presentation of the survey results. This paper delivers the implementation a comprehensive set of guidelines for the design of online questionnaires via our survey software. The guidelines are drawn from relevant disparate existing studies. Implementation of the design principles are mainly concerning the survey structure, layout, navigation, formatting, response format and question types. The design principles are incorporated within the survey creation software to guide questionnaire design according to best-practice, while the benefits of online-questionnaire delivery can be achieve

Towards A Web-Enabled Geo-Sample Web: An Open Source Resource Registration and Management System for Connecting Geo-Samples to the Web

Within the earth sciences the curation and sharing of geo-samples is crucial to supporting reproducible research, in addition to extending the use of the samples in new research, and saving costs by avoiding sample loss and duplicating sampling activities. In the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), researchers gather various geo-samples as part of their field studies and collaborative projects. The diversity of the samples and their unsystematic management led ambiguous sample numbers, incomplete sample descriptions, and difficulties in finding the samples and their related data. These problems are also found in universities, research institutes and government agencies, which usually curate and manage diverse samples. To address this problem, we developed an open source registration and management system to identify geo-samples unambiguously and to manage their metadata and data systematically. The system supports the linking of samples and sample collections to the real world features from where they were collected, as well as to their data and reports on the Web. This paper describes the implementation of the system including its underlying design considerations, and its applications. The system was built upon the International Geo Sample Number persistent identifier system with Semantic Web technologies. It has been implemented and tested with individual users and three sample repositories in the organization

Prototype of GIS Based Location Information Enquiry System

The convergence of the internet and wireless communication has led the popularity of using handheld devices. People have now started demanding services that can be delivered any time anywhere, called Location Based Services (LBS). This paper deal with development of location based services on handheld devices that apply to emergency services. Handheld devices suffer from serious constrains in three areas: memory size, processor speed and screen size. This application uses the client server concept within wireless internet environment. The positioning service such as GPS is used to know the position of the user. The objective of this research is to display special query on the required spatial information within handheld devices using different operating systems such as WinCE, Palm OS and Symbian. This implies the strong feature of the proposed system. Hence the system assists people e.g. at the time of emergency to find the shortest path to the nearest hospital. The application will be access through the wireless internet. Only the related location in the entire map will be displayed on the handheld devices to which gives the economical usage of bandwidth and resources for real time response. This technology uses mobile internet as web browser embedded in the handheld devices. In Malaysia, a Location Based Services is still new and can be expand in many ways, especially in emergency cases

Persistent identification of instruments

Instruments play an essential role in creating research data. Given the importance of instruments and associated metadata to the assessment of data quality and data reuse, globally unique, persistent and resolvable identification of instruments is crucial. The Research Data Alliance Working Group Persistent Identification of Instruments (PIDINST) developed a community-driven solution for persistent identification of instruments which we present and discuss in this paper. Based on an analysis of 10 use cases, PIDINST developed a metadata schema and prototyped schema implementation with DataCite and ePIC as representative persistent identifier infrastructures and with HZB (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie) and BODC (British Oceanographic Data Centre) as representative institutional instrument providers. These implementations demonstrate the viability of the proposed solution in practice. Moving forward, PIDINST will further catalyse adoption and consolidate the schema by addressing new stakeholder requirements

Persistent Identification Of Instruments

Instruments play an essential role in creating research data. Given the importance of instruments and associated metadata to the assessment of data quality and data reuse, globally unique, persistent and resolvable identification of instruments is crucial. The Research Data Alliance Working Group Persistent Identification of Instruments (PIDINST) developed a community-driven solution for persistent identification of instruments which we present and discuss in this paper. Based on an analysis of 10 use cases, PIDINST developed a metadata schema and prototyped schema implementation with DataCite and ePIC as representative persistent identifier infrastructures and with HZB (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie) and BODC (British Oceanographic Data Centre) as representative institutional instrument providers. These implementations demonstrate the viability of the proposed solution in practice. Moving forward, PIDINST will further catalyse adoption and consolidate the schema by addressing new stakeholder requirements

InteroperAble Descriptions of Observable Property Terminologies (I-ADOPT) WG - outputs and recommendations

The InteroperAble Description of Observable Property Terminologies Working Group (I-ADOPT WG) was formed in June 2019 under the auspices of the Research Data Alliance’s Vocabulary and Semantic Services Interest Group. Its objective was to develop a framework to harmonise the way observable properties are named and conceptualised, in various communities within and across scientific domains. There was a realisation that the rapid demand for controlled vocabularies specialised in describing observed properties (i.e. measured, simulated, counted quantities, or qualitative observations) was presenting a risk of proliferation of semantic resources that were poorly aligned. This, in turn, was becoming a source of confusion for the end-users and a hindrance to data interoperability. The development of the I-ADOPT Framework proceeded in multiple phases. Following the initial phase dedicated to the collection of user stories, the identification of key requirements, and an in-depth analysis of existing semantic representations of scientific variables and of terminologies in use, the group focused on identifying the essential components of the conceptual framework, reusing as much as possible concepts that were common to existing operational resources. The proposed framework was then tested against a variety of examples to ensure that it could be used as a sound basis for the creation of new variable names as needed. The results were formalised into the I-ADOPT ontology and subsequently extended with usage guidelines to form the I-ADOPT Framework presented in this document. The output can now be used to facilitate interoperability between existing semantic resources and to support the provision of machine-readable variable descriptions whose components are mapped to FAIR vocabulary concepts. The group also issued the following six key recommendations: 1. Data creators, curators or publishers should describe the variable(s) held in datasets in both a human- and a machine-readable format. 2. The variable’s description should enable data reuse with minimum reliance on externally held free-text documentation. 3. The machine-readable description should make use of FAIR terminologies (e.g., controlled vocabularies, ontological relationships) adhering to Linked Data principles. 4. The translation from human readable to machine readable form should follow a decomposition approach that is compatible with the classes and relations defined in the I-ADOPT ontology (https://w3id.org/iadopt/). 5. Users should preferably reuse terminologies that are already aligned with the I-ADOPT Framework by either reusing existing concepts or extending collections, or by creating new concepts based on the I-ADOPT Framework. 6. For variables based on a different schema, a mapping to the I-ADOPT Framework should be provided. The group also set up public repositories to continue open collaboration and give access to resources that will be maintained and/or developed beyond the lifetime of the official RDA working group: 1) a catalogue of terminologies relevant to observable properties, 2) a repository of design patterns; 3) a step-by-step guide for minting new variables, 4) use-case specific guidelines on implementing the framework, 5) a repository of applications, and user implementation stories; 6) additional materials including a list of alignments with other ontological resources

Aligning Observable Property Terminologies using the I-ADOPT framework

During its lifetime, the RDA WG InteroperAble Descriptions of Observable Property Terminologies (I-ADOPT) developed a semantic framework to represent scientific variables and give a detailed account of what has been measured or otherwise been observed. The framework breaks down complex variable descriptions into essential atomic components, e.g., what quality or quantity kind of which object or phenomenon kind are the subject of the measurement or observation. While the ecological domain served as a starting point, we took into account other domains as part of the development. As a result, the I-ADOPT model is a generic framework to describe observational properties. The recommendations of the IADOPT WG have been published along with several outputs including the I-ADOPT ontology itself and a collection of terminologies to be used as atomic components. The I-ADOPT WG is now in maintenance mode but work is continuing on testing and supporting real-life implementation scenarios. Multiple terminology providers and data repositories have started aligning their variables to the I-ADOPT framework. This results in an increasing number of I-ADOPT-compliant variable descriptions from different stakeholders. We are now ready to test whether one of the main goals of the I-ADOPT WG has actually been achieved: does the I-ADOPT framework enable semantic interoperability of variable descriptions across datasets annotated using different controlled vocabularies? This poster highlights how the I-ADOPT model has been applied to existing terminologies of observational variables, providing detailed semantic context information. We present current efforts to exploit these details while aligning terminologies of different origins. We want to encourage other terminology providers and domains to explore the I-ADOPT framework to grow an increasing network of interoperable terminologies for observational variables