A question bank is needed to conduct an online survey. A question bank for a particular role or other target (e.g. school) is established by - (1) using an existing question bank without revision, (2) selecting and amending an existing question bank, or (3) developing a new question bank. The online survey process requires the question banks to be developed using a particular format. This streamlines the process of collecting the data and generating reports, and greatly reduces the cost of the process. The basic format of the question bank is as follows (see examples below)

1. you have a total of 14 categories that you can use, and
2. you can use up to 5 questions for each category

You may use less than 14 categories. An additional 10 customized questions are available for each specific survey. These questions are developed (if you choose to use them) during the process of setting up a specific online survey. These additional 10 customized questions are added to whatever question bank you choose to use for a specific survey.

If parts of a question bank contain more than 5 questions you can use more than one category (e.g. Religious Leadership 1 and Religious Leadership 2). If you develop a question bank that has less than 5 questions in some of the categories, then blanks will appear in the report where no questions exist within a particular category. This does not undermine the value of the report but it may reduce the professional appearance of the report. The blank questions will not appear within the actual online survey. Another option is to enter all the questions without leaving blanks but this will require you to enter double titles for categories where questions from two parts of the survey connect (for example, you may have a question bank with 8 questions for religious leadership and 7 questions for educative leadership – this first 5 questions will fall in a category named religious leadership but the next category of 5 questions will contain some questions about religious leadership and some questions about educative leadership – this category can be named religious and educative leadership with an indication of which questions refer to educative leadership (e.g. Religious and Educative Leadership (q9-10)). You can avoid the use of double titles by using generic titles like Section 1, Section 2, Section 3 etc., but this reduces the descriptive quality of the category headings within the final report. You can also restructure the question bank by reducing or adding additional questions within certain categories in order to ensure that the number of questions in each part of the survey are multiples of 5. If you do this, then you can use single headings for each category and you won’t have any blanks. In summary, if you have or want to develop a question bank that has categories with questions that are not multiples of 5, you have the following options:

Many of the participating organisations have developed question banks for appraising various roles and other targets (e.g. schools, programs etc.) within their organisation. As the question banks are developed, we will seek permission to include these question banks within the active question bank database which will make them available to other participants. This will allow you to review these question banks and use content that is relevant to the role(s) or target(s) you working on.

Example of the question bank format for appraising a particular role

Note: you can use up to 14 categories for a total of 70 questions.

Note: an additional 10 customized questions are available for each specific survey

Note: If you wish to use the online survey process to seek feedback on something else other than a particular role (e.g. perceptions about a school as a whole), the process of developing or revising the question bank is the same.

Click here to access sample question banks

Click here to access the online question bank development process