ESC Pau is one of the most important business schools in southwest France. As one of only 28 members of France's prestigious Conference des Grandes Ecoles, the school draws post graduate students to its three-year programs locally, nationally, and internationally. Part-funded by the local business community it serves, ESC Pau takes an innovative and consumer-oriented approach whit its educational programs. It provides the only MSB program in France.
A detailed survey was carried out among the local business community, using the Internet. As an existing user of PASW Statistics, the school engaged SPSS Consultancy Services, through the local office in France, to provide expertise and technical assistance in designing and administering an appropriate online survey. Respondents were recruited to the survey through a postal mailing. Public access points to the survey were provided in a number of locations provided by France Telecom for respondents with no access to the Internet.
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A combination of SPSS Inc. technology, client expertise and SPSS Inc. statistical know-how has helped ESC Pau, a dynamic business school in the southern French city of Pau, to take up a position of leadership in nurturing the region's use of the Internet. Educationalists are often accused of being out of touch with the needs of business, which made it all the more critical that ESC Pau, when organizing a regional business management conference into new technology, should have its finger firmly on the pulse of the local economy. By conducting an extensive survey among members of the business community, the school was able to show how divided that community was in its use of the Internet and to develop useful classifications and interpretations that conference delegates and members of that community could readily understand. In identifying the obstacles to acceptance the school has been able to devise outreach programs to help managers achieve their desire to increase core competencies in the new technologies.
Due to the nature of the topic, it was decided to carry out the research exercise on the Internet. Researchers at ESC Pau were already familiar with SPSS Inc. products for analyzing data, but not to use the Internet to collect data. They decided to enlist some experienced help.
Herbert Casteran and Nathalie Hirigoyen from ESC Pau worked closely with consultant Patrick Duquesne on the design of the questionnaire. A set of questions was selected that would identify trends yet result in a relatively small number of sharply focused findings, rather than the scattergun approach typical in surveys. SPSS Consultancy services in Paris then set up the questionnaire using Quancept Web™. “The results are comprehensible to any non-statistician. We can show these to anyone as they are understandable to the layman. The portrayal of the data is at least as important as the data itself.”
Due to the nature of the topic, it was decided to carry out the re search exercise on the Internet. Researchers at ESC Pau were already familiar with SPSS Inc. products for analyzing data, but not to use the Internet to collect data. They decided to enlist some experienced help.Herbert Casteran and Nathalie Hirigoyen from ESC Pau worked closely with consultant Patrick Duquesne on the design of the questionnaire. A set of questions was selected that would identify trends yet result in a relatively small number of sharply focused findings, rather than the scattergun approach typical in surveys. SPSS Consultancy services in Paris then set up the questionnaire using Quancept Web™.
The results are comprehensible to any non-statistician. We can show these to anyone as they are understandable to the layman. The portrayal of the data is at least as important as the data itself.
A letter mailed out in the traditional way invited respondents to participate and contained the Web site address and password needed to access the survey. For those not connected to the Web, France Telecom, offered access points in some of its retail locations. 120 business users participated, including 20 from France Telecom locations, providing a representative and well-balanced sample.
The ESC Pau team was impressed with the high quality of the data received from Quancept Web. It was available for analysis after only one hour's checking and cleaning. All the frequency counts, cross-tabs, factor analysis, multi-dimensional scaling, discriminant analysis and charting was produced in half a day, saving valuable time and costs. The results were delivered as a series of charts in Microsoft PowerPoint, to the delight of Dr Painter, Director of the Online MBA program.
"The results are comprehensible to any non-statistician. We can show these to anyone as they are understandable to the layman. The portrayal of the data is at least as important as the data itself."
The survey identified four different kinds of Internet users in the business community by comparing recorded Internet usage against the perceived utility or value of the Internet in the workplace. The sample divided almost perfectly into four groups, which the researchers termed Internet fanatics (high utility and high usage), Internet resistant (high utility but low usage), Internet resigned (low utility but high usage) and Internet spectators (low utility and usage). Multi-dimensional scaling identified four basic ways that users considered the Internet: as a risk, a heresy (running contrary to accepted norms), a tool (something to lower cost and increase accessibility), and a mutation.
"The mutation uses were the ones we found the most interesting: these included a new method of consumerism, changing the organization at work; creating networks and the value of information they found on the Internet as opposed simply to considering it as a tool."
There were several surprises when it came to examining the barriers to using the Internet. Slowness of the net, followed by security and confidentiality came out top. Remarkably, in a country proudly defensive of its own language against the ubiquity of English on the Internet, language barriers were at the bottom of the list. While the age of the user had a predictable effect on affinity and usage, as did educational attainment and possession of a technical background, equality prevailed when it came to gender.
Dr Painter concluded, "This was critical information displayed in a way we could understand it. It was a real gem for us and it means we can do all our planning from this. We don't want to be teaching in a vacuum and find the needs of the community to be entirely different. This puts us in touch with the market and I don't believe we would have been able to have garnered this information in any other way."
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