Senior Project - PSS

The Psychology Department of the University of Colorado Boulder conducts an annual 70-question survey of its graduating senior class. The survey is used to evaluate the department's performance as perceived by students who have generally been in the department for several years. In previous years, the survey has been administered to each student on a five-option, paper bubble sheet at some appointed time and place. The completed paper forms were then processed, and a frequency distribution for all of the questions was provided to the department.

Unfortunately, student turnout was typically below the department's expectations. In an attempt to increase the number of participants, the department decided to conduct the survey during a span of multiple weeks via the Internet, rather than during specific times. The department hopes that by making the survey easier to take, more people will participate.

This project provides a general, web-based survey package that implements the department's solution. The software allows an administrator to create arbitrary surveys, set up lists of eligible students, view a frequency of student responses to survey questions, and perform numerous other administrative tasks. The system, of course, also provides an interface for students to login and fill out the survey. The system was implemented in PHP with a back-end database on a Mac OS X server.