The government of Ontario began collecting data on "key performance indicators"(KPI) for colleges in 1998. Data on graduate employment rates, graduate satisfaction, and employer satisfaction are collected by external service providers through telephone surveys (some 40,000 graduates, 10,000 employers, and 90,000 current students are surveyed).The data are used as a basis for distributing some of the colleges' funding.
a. What are some of the difficulties that would be involved in collecting and interpreting these data?
b. For the 1999-2000 year, 59% of the students surveyed (overall) indicated that they were very satisfied or satisfied with college services. In the 2000-2001 year, 66.8% of the students surveyed indicated that they were very satisfied or satisfied. This percentage has been above 66% for the entire period from 2000 to 2007 (the most recent data available at the time of publication). Do you think this means that the colleges all improved their services significantly between 1999-2000 and the following school year?
c. Go to the website mentioned in part b, and download the document called "2005 KPI Trends."What techniques are used to summarize the trends in key performance indicators?
d. In the section on the "KPI Overview," in the document you downloaded for part c, read the section on the student satisfaction rate. What difficulties are there in comparing the data from 1999-2000 and the data from the subsequent years?