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 DAI, Inc., Student Development, Assessment Tools, College Affairs, Career Planning, Advising, Counseling

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS


ONLINE FEATURE FAQS
  1. What is the DAI designed to accomplish?
  2. What are DAI Inventories and Dimensions?
  3. How do I purchase the DAI for use on my campus?
  4. How are the charges for the DAI calculated?
  5. Can I use one DAI account to Issue multiple Inventories?
  6. What is a DAI Unit?
  7. How do I determine how many Units of the DAI system I need to purchase?
  8. How do I do a DAI pre and post-test to measure the impact of a particular event or program?
  9. How do I use the DAI system to do a Needs Assessment?
  10. How do I enter the student information if I have hundreds or thousands of students?
  11. What if some students are not finished with their Inventory when I stop collecting data? Will this distort the results?
  12. What statistics are provided in the DAI reports?
  13. How do I survey multiple populations on my campus so I can compare their scores to the entire campus?
  14. How do I sort and print the results of my surveys?
  15. What does a DAI Administrator do?
  16. Why do I get a 'Data Missing' or 'Expired' page when I use my 'back' button?
  17. What is the System Administrator Reports?
  18. What is the Data Research Option?


GENERAL INFORMATION FAQS
  1. What DAI materials are available and how can I purchase them?
  2. How complicated is the op scan scoring process?
  3. Is there anyone in my area who has used the DAI the same way I am thinking of using it?
  4. What about the reliabilityand validity of the DAI?
  5. Do you have any resources on assessment for a leadership development training program?
  6. Are there any journal articles on the DAI?
  7. How long does it take to complete the inventory?
  8. How can we be sure of a successful assessment efforts given limited resources or administrative support?
  9. How much time should we plan in developing a good assessment program?
  10. You've been hard to reach. Why is that?



ONLINE FEATURE FAQS

1. What is the DAI designed to accomplish?

The purpose of the Developmental Advising Inventory (DAI) is to collect comprehensive survey data from students about their personal development during a specified time frame. You can use the system to collect needs assessment (baseline) data or to pre-test and post-test, or to document the impact of your campus programs on student development. Students can take the Inventory as many times as they want within the specified time to track their progress without effecting pre-test and post-test data. The Administrators of the DAI can sort the results in a number of ways and print reports to compare scores for sub-populations to the scores of all students that took the Inventory, or print the statistics for all students that took the Inventory.
2. What are DAI Inventories and Dimensions?

The DAI (Developmental Advising Inventory) is composed of a set of nine sets of questions covering different areas of student development. Each set of questions is called a Dimension and all the Dimensions together form the Inventory. The Dimensions are Intellectual, Life Planning, Social, Physical, Emotional, Sexual, Cultural, Spiritual, and Political. The students can fill out the questions for these Dimensions (sets of questions) one Dimension at a time. They can't see the summary of their Dimensions until they fill out all of them, which provides an incentive for them to complete the entire survey (Inventory). They can Start an Inventory, which means that they have filled out one or more of the Dimensions but haven't finished all of them yet. When the student finishes filling out all the questions for all the Dimensions in the Inventory, they have Completed an Inventory and can view the results.
3. How do I purchase the DAI for use on my campus?

To purchase the DAI for your campus, go to the Order form on the DAI web site. Fill out the order form and click Send. Your order will be received by DAI and you will be sent an Invoice by ground mail along with a Purchase Order number. We will activate your account. When you verify that your DAI account been activated, notify your Accounts Payable office to make your payment to DAI.
4. How are the charges for the DAI calculated?

You are charged for the number of Inventories that you make available to students, not the number of students who take the Inventory. The number of Inventories that are made available to students is determined by the User List that you create which contains the names, login, and password of each student.

Each time you Issue an Inventory you are making your current user list available to everyone on that list. So when you add students to your User List and Issue an Inventory, your charges are based on the current User List, not just the list of students who did not take the first Inventory that you Issued.

To reduce the charges to your account, you must delete (not just deactivate) Users from the User List before you Issue an Inventory. If you know that some students on your list will not take the Inventory, or if you don't want them to take the Inventory, you should delete them from your User List to avoid being charged for making the Inventory available to them.
5. Can I use one DAI account to Issue multiple Inventories?

You can Issue as many Inventories per Account as your purchase of Units allow. However, we recommend that you Issue either one Inventory (for Needs Assessments) or two Inventories (a pre-test and post-test for Outcomes Assessment). If you attempt to Issue multiple Inventories per Account, you may accidentally use more DAI Units than you intend unless you are careful about editing your User List. Remember, your charges are based on the number of Users on your current User List, not just the ones that sign up for a new Inventory.

If you create multiple Inventories, users will be asked to select which Inventory they will complete. However, charges are based on your entire User List, not just the ones that take a particular Inventory. This is because you are making all Inventories available to all people on your list, even if you ask them to just fill out one Inventory. Setting up multiple Inventories does allow you to sort the results for just the students that have taken a particular Inventory.

If you want to survey all students on your first survey but only a portion of them in your second survey, you should delete the students from your User List that you don't want to include in the second Inventory to avoid being charged for students you don't want to survey again. If you want to Assess sub-populations of your campus, you may want to use the Special Codes instead of Issuing multiple Inventories to avoid using more Units than you need. Special Codes are determined by you when you first set up your Inventory. They add a choice on the survey for your Users that allow them to identify themselves as living in a particular Residence Hall, participating in a particular program, etc.
6. What is a DAI Unit?

You purchase the DAI by DAI Units. One Unit allows you to Issue one pre-test Inventory and one post-test Inventory, plus the ability of students to take the Inventory on their own in between the pre and post tests without effecting your results. If you do not want to do a post-test, you can use each Unit to make the Inventories available to twice the number of Users as purchased Units. This is because the DAI system was designed to allow you to Issue two Inventories (a two-for-one deal!) per Unit. The purpose is to encourage pre- and post-testing for Outcomes Assessment.

The first time you make an Inventory available to the list of students on your User List (when you Issue your first Inventory), Units equal to the number of students on your User List will be deducted from your account, anticipating that you will be Issuing another Inventory for a post-test. So if you have 50 Units and Issue an Inventory with a User List of 50, your account will show that all your Units are Used. However, it will also show that you can Issue one more Inventory with the same amount of Users (for your post-test). If you add Users, you won't be able to Issue another Inventory unless you purchase more Units.

If you Issue a third Inventory (say, for another groups of students), you will use the number of Units it will take to complete another set of pre-test and post-test surveys. So it is best to Issue either only one Inventory and use it for two times the number of Units that you purchase, or to Issue Inventories in pairs. If you Issue odd numbers of Inventories other than one, you will not be using the full number of Inventories you could Issue for the number of Units you have purchased.
7. How do I determine how many Units of the DAI system I need to purchase?

First, determine the number of students you will want to take the Inventory. If you will want them to take only one Inventory for a Needs Assessment, divide the number of students by two. This is the number of Units you would need to Issue one Inventory to those students. If you plan to do a pre-test and post-test, the number of students that will take both Inventories is the number of Units you will need.

Remember, if you add Units to your User List, the next time you Issue an Inventory you will use the number of Units it will take to make the Inventory to all of the students on your list, not just the number of Units it would take to make it available to the new students you added.
8. How do I do a DAI pre and post-test to measure the impact of a particular event or program?

First, determine the number of students you want to survey. Purchase this number of DAI Units. When your account is set up, log on to the site using your Administrator login name and password. If you want to be able to sort your information later by additional characteristics than the standard demographic characteristics included with the DAI system, follow the online directions for added a Special Code that will add selections to the survey. Issue an Inventory before the event or program you want to assess. Monitor your account using your Account Summary page so you can see how many students have completed the survey. You may need to remind students to do the survey before the event or program. Just before the event or program being assessed, close the Inventory and print out a report. If you want to sort or filter the report based on certain demographic characteristics, do this now and print a report for each one.

After the event or program, Issue a second Inventory to the same User List of students (you can delete students that didn't take the pre-test if you don't want to include them in your post-test to save DAI Units). When enough students have taken the post-test Inventory, close this Inventory and print the same kinds of reports you did for the pre-test. You then have reports to compare for the impact of the event or program.
9. How do I use the DAI system to do a Needs Assessment?

First, determine the number of students you will want to take the Inventory. Then divide the number of students by two and purchase that number of Units. Issue one Inventory. Close it when enough students have taken the Inventory for your results. You can determine if enough students have taken the Inventory by looking at the Account Summary. Print your results.
10. How do I enter the student information if I have hundreds or thousands of students?

You may purchase the DAI Bulk Account Registration feature that will allow you to create a list of printable login/password combinations to give out to students.
11. What if some students are not finished with their Inventory when I stop collecting data? Will this distort the results?

No, data are not included in Reports from incomplete Inventories.
12. What statistics are provided in the DAI reports?

The Reports include the N (number of survey participants), mean score for each item, and Standard Deviation for all items in each Dimension.
13. How do I survey multiple populations on my campus so I can compare their scores to the entire campus?

There are two ways to compare sub-populations to the main population under investigation. The DAI automatically includes questions to students about a number of demographic characteristics such as age, level in school, ethnicity, and sex. You may also define Special Codes which allow you to ask additional questions such as which Residence Hall the student lives in, or which campus program that they have taken. Any of these characteristics can be used to sort the survey results so you can compare sub-populations to the scores for all students.

Another approach to surveying multiple populations is to create separate Inventories for each campus population. If you do this, you should either edit your User List of students to delete students you don't want to survey when you Issue a new Inventory, or open different Accounts for separate Inventories. This will keep you from using more DAI Units than necessary to accomplish your goals.
14. How do I sort and print the results of my surveys?

Results of the Inventories are reported in two ways for Administrators. You may print the Basic Report results when you complete the Inventory, or request the Advanced Reports from DAI. The Advanced Reports adds a choice to the left side of your Administration web pages so you can go to the Advanced Reports page. This page allows you to sort and print your Results in a number of ways. There is a Print Friendly version available if your browser has trouble printing the results. Otherwise you can use your browser's regular print functions.
15. What does a DAI Administrator do?

At a minimum, the Administrator adds students to the User List, assigns their login and password, makes the student active (allowing them to take the survey), Issues an Inventory, Closes the Inventory, and views the results. The DAI Administrator can also grant Administrative access to particular Users, set Special Codes to be used by students to survey sub-populations, view an Account Summary of the Account, and create multiple versions of reports based on a number of different sort categories.
16. Why to I get a 'Data Missing' or 'Expired' page when I use my 'back' button?

This is a common error resulting from custom pages being created by the server. Try to avoid using your 'back' button when taking the online demo or using the administrators section. Instead, use the navigation buttons to the left and bottom of the page. You may also try clicking the 'refresh' or 'reload' button.
17. What is the System Administrator Reports?

These allow administrators to view and print a report of the data collected from the inventory. It includes a variety of sorting functions, averages, and standard deviations. For the majority of users of DAI, because it provides data critical to needs and outcomes assessment, this service should be purchased. However, we have given users the option of declining this service if they only intend to give students the experience of using the DAI system.
18. What is the Data Research Option?

Data Research Option*. This is a valuable feature for data oriented administrators, professors, or graduate students. It allows you to export the DAI raw data behind the aggregate report and make it available for importing into statistical programs like SPSS. Doing so makes it easy to analyze DAI information with data collected from other sources for important decision-making. For example, DAI data can then be compared with assessments focusing on program effectiveness, learning and development patterns, and outcome measures related to institutional mission, retention, etc. In addition, the DAI raw data can also be exported for use in spreadsheet programs like MS Excel so that attractive presentations can be made using pie charts, bar graphs, etc.

* This feature is technically called the CSV option (Comma Separated Values); or, in Excel it is referred to as a Comma Delimited Text File).

GENERAL INFORMATION FAQS
 

1. What DAI materials are available and how can I purchase them?

The Specimen Set, a sample copy of all available materials, is $20 prepaid. Subsequent orders of $25 or more can be purchased (Order Form) using an institutional Purchase Order Number. In special, hurry-up, circumstances, this number along with other pertinent institutional information can be communicated via telephone, email, or FAX with the official paperwork to follow.

2. How complicated is the op scan scoring process? We've done a small pilot study and self-scored those inventories. Now we want to follow-up with a larger assessment and collect the data.

Not very. The best thing to do is to review the section on Scoring on this website. Also review the op scan answer sheet, the Scoring Services Booklet and Order From in the Specimen Set. Make a list of questions and call Dr. Jerry Thayer at (616) 471-6214. There is also a detailed set of instructions at the bottom of the Scoring Services Order Form for collecting and mailing the answer sheets when you are ready. But, you will always want to call Jerry as a final check before mailing them.

3. Is there anyone in my area who has used the DAI the same way I am thinking of using it?

Maybe. We have a fledgling database of people who have used the DAI. Also, this website (User Groups) is inviting users to register with us if they are willing to share their assessment experiences with the DAI and indicate the type of student service applications they have focused on.

4. What about the reliability and validity of the DAI?

The research and statistical methods used in the development of the inventory follow the traditional guidelines in most texts. The psychometric results are respectable but modest. Specifically, the dimensions are not "pure" in the classical sense as expected for factors of this nature. But we believe you can have confidence in the results. The Advisor's Guide has a section on the "Development of the DAI" you might want to check out. There's probably no good substitute for a small scale application of the inventory to make your own judgment about its value.

5. Do you have any resources on assessment for a leadership development training program?

Not yet. One of the dimensions of the DAI (Political) is really about leadership and service. You might find a recent book by Jossey-Bass a helpful resource. It's entitled "Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want To Make A Difference". One of the authors is Dr. Tim McMahon, the co-author of the DAI.

6. Are there any journal articles on the DAI?

Just a few. The initial article on the development of the inventory is in the NACADA Journal Vol. 11(1), Spring 1991. A more recent article is in the NASPA Journal and focuses on using the DAI to create a student development curriculum. Hit this link - Publications.

7. How long does it take to complete the inventory? Student attention span--especially in large groups--is pretty limited for this type of activity.

It varies. With 135 items, it usually takes 45-60 minutes if they take it seriously. Although some students do it easily in 30 minutes or so. We have a bunch of suggestions for administering the DAI in large group situations in the Advisor's Guide. One of these is to administer only three dimensions at a time followed by a fun activity related to one of the items of the dimensions. Another option would be to administer only one dimension at a time interspersed with dyad, triad, or large group interactions.

8. How can we be sure of a successful assessment efforts given limited resources or administrative support?

You can't, really. But, we have an article published in the NASPA Journal (Publications) which has a helpful list of suggestions for ensuring success. One important item is to recruit a core of committed staff and faculty to serve as a steering group--from 4-6 individuals. You'll need creativity, energy, and continuity. A small group with a shared vision can make good things happen even if you lose a member or two at the end of the school year.

9. How much time should we plan in developing a good assessment program?

Better plan on three years for a good foundation. Maybe more if you are ambitious. We suggest three stages: (1) First year -- Small pilot project with a select group of students (e.g., resident assistants and later the residents on their floors). (2) Second year -- an expanded sample of one or more residence halls. And finally, (3) a system-wide sample. By then, of course, some of these students are now seniors and you might be able to do an outcome assessment which is (so soon?) an outcome assessment or longitudinal study of a generation of college students. Ready to try?

10. You've been hard to reach. Why is that?

Yes, we're sorry. DAI, Inc. is really a professional hobby more than a commercial enterprise. We have no secretary. Only an answering machine, telephone, email, etc. We're a business because that's what the law requires to make these materials available. But we get our kicks from communicating with you about student development assessment projects. Hope this website helps!

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