For Continuous Research Automation

Galaxy is a unique new development from Pulse Train Software which can help to significantly reduce the complexity and cost of conducting continuous research surveys. It addresses the key issue of managing questionnaire change in complex, longitudinal studies and the effect that this has on downstream activities such as data collection, storage, processing and delivery.

Galaxy enables users to:

• Decrease manual operations
• Minimise errors by centralising changes
• Speed up all of the production stages, pre- and post- data collection
• Reduce the costs associated with complex, often-changing questionnaires

Galaxy allows users to:

• Manage lists of questionnaire "materials" such as brands, products, media titles, etc.
• Manage and maintain a library of typical questions
• Generate questionnaire scripts for CA*I and Microsoft® Word documents for paper questionnaires, populating questionnaire templates with questions from the library and "materials"
• Manage a central repository for collected data in a unified format
• Extract any portion of the collected data as a single data set, performing automatic re-coding to a standardised format
• Automatically generate DP scripts based on templates and the "materials" database
• Use questionnaire templates which, once defined, do not need to be changed when "materials" change!

General workflow in Galaxy

Galaxy consists of the following modules:

The Materials Database provides management of the questionnaire materials (typically brands, products or media titles). It provides for the definition of a variety of material types each of which has a list of associated attributes such as text, number, date, etc. and may define dependencies between the different types, such as a cross-reference or a parent-child relationship. Materials (and their types) can be created, modified and deleted. The database provides built-in support for history tracking and there is also built-in support for multilingual titles where some languages can also have different grammar cases. The Question Library system is a part of the Materials Database.

The Questionnaire Builder generates questionnaire specifications and printed questionnaires as Microsoft Word documents according to rules defined in questionnaire templates and the current contents of the Materials Database. Templates for questionnaire specifications define the structure of the questionnaire and are then populated with actual lists of "materials". For example, the multiple response question "What brands of chewing gum can you name?" can reference the Materials Database for the actual answer list. The template for printed questionnaires defines layout and formatting styles. The user defines it in a WYSIWYG environment using the familiar Microsoft Word application. Then, templates are populated with actual questions and the questionnaire is generated. The Questionnaire Builder supports personalisation of questionnaires, allowing different Microsoft Word documents to be generated from a common underlying schema. The system also supports the automatic creation of all necessary registration and decoding information for our scanning software, eliminating another potentially manual stage.

The Surveys Database provides central storage for the collected data (the data collection itself is outside of the scope of Galaxy and is handled by other software in the Pulse Train portfolio). It stores both schema information and collected respondent data as well as storing cross-references between actual questions and answers on the one hand and materials from the Materials Database on the other. The Surveys Database allows collected data to be uploaded and also provides a number of summary reports on the data held. It allows any portion of the data to be downloaded and extracted. A portion of the stored data may be just a part of one wave, a combination of several waves or even a combination of various surveys. Data merging will be done automatically by using cross-references to "materials" and re-coding will also be performed automatically, as required, to generate standardised data outputs.

The Output Manager allows users to define data processing operations and execute them. Once defined, a given operation can be executed any number of times on different data sets. An Output "scenario" is simply a sequential list of procedures, each an "executable" file such as a Visual Basic Script, Visual Basic.Net, exe file, bat file, etc. representing a single step in the data processing operation. The Output Manager allows parameters to be shared between procedures so the output of one procedure may be defined as input for following procedures.

It is mostly beneficial to use Galaxy as a complete system; however its modules can be used separately providing substantial advantages to clients using questionnaire and data management features.

Galaxy technology highlights:

• Modules are tightly integrated with other Pulse Train products such as the Bellview suite of data collection products
• Support for industry standards such as Triple-S
• Client-server architecture
• Multi-user access to all system information
• Open system architecture allowing interaction via COM, .NET and XML files