Tweede QANS

The original QANS project introduced the eScience Center to the world of survey software as research software. The project centered around the design and implementation of new infrastructure to create and administer surveys with a specific type of questions, called “peer assessment”. These surveys are administered to collect data to perform (longitudinal) research on the social network of its participants, who will always participate along with the rest of their so-called “peer group” (e.g. a school class, team, family, etc.). In a peer assessment question, the participant is presented with an answer option for each of the peer group members. The automated customization of answer options per participant, in combination with longitudinal participant tracking, the need for privacy (through pseudonymization), yet need for identification of individuals in a later stage (the school report), led to a complex design challenge.

In the original QANS project, a lot of time was spent on designing the system and implementing fully functional prototype of the system. The overall goal of this project is to make the QANS infrastructure more (re)usable by increasing its robustness and documentation. We will work on facilitating easier installation and testing of the various components as well as the whole integrated system, provide better development, deployment and user documentation and work on overall sustainability of the software.