For the last two posts, I have given a brief overview of the qualitative results from the ESA meeting. For this post, I am reporting the nitty-gritty numbers.
I formally surveyed 55 Ecologists while at the ESA meeting, and managed to get a fairly diverse pool. Here’s how their academic status fell out:
Their areas of study were fairly diverse too:
When asked how frequently they used Excel, 75% responded with “every day” or “almost every day”. All of that Excel use resulted in a general feeling that they were knowledgeable about Excel:
Among the most interesting results related to Excel use. I asked respondents what they used Excel for:
Not surprisingly, almost all participants used Excel for organizing their data, and a large percentage shared their data in the form of Excel files.
What does all of this mean for the DCXL project? It means there’s a need we are going to fill: Ecologists use Excel for data organization and sharing, but they aren’t using it as effectively as they could (see previous post).
The goal of this project is to identify what features the Excel software could include that would facilitate data sharing, data management, and data archiving. It looks like we have our work cut out for us!
