Services

1. License to use

This allows researchers to use a Mind Garden instrument without support from Mind Garden in administering the instrument. The instrument may be ordered in paper form or as a PDF file. The only differences between paper and PDF are in the amount of time and money needed to acquire them. The PDF comes to you much faster and has no added shipping charges - see more details below.

For paper versions, we send via FedEx a single copy of the instrument and scoring key with a license to reproduce the instrument the number of times purchased and specified on the license. You specify the name you want to have us print on the license. You pay the shipping, you make the copies.

For PDF versions, in the 'Ship to' name field on the order form, specify the name of the person who will "own" the license. We ship to you digitally (actually, we send you login information so that you can retrieve the PDF) and you print locally. We don't charge for the convenience factor - you get access to it quickly without any extra charges. We make available at your login a single copy of the instrument and scoring key with a license to reproduce the instrument the number of times purchased and specified on the license. In the 'Ship to' email field provide the email address of the person who will retrieve the license (this email address may or not be for the license owner).

2. Use a Mind Garden instrument "as is" online with the use of Transform, our online system.

You may wish to administer the instrument "as is" online, using Mind Garden's Transform. This is incredibly easy and will save you a great deal of time. It includes access to our Transform system and data download that includes scoring (raw scale scores by respondent).

More about Mind Garden's Transform system

Transform is a human assessment system that creates a unique identity for your participants. This means you can do self-assessment and assessment of the same person over time or across many instruments. Some instruments are multi-rater where the person can assess themselves and others can rate them. A participant can even rate their social environment. Since each person has an identity, all data you collect from or about a person stays linked to that person. You may even want to enter external criterion data or collect demographics from them.

How to use Transform

First, purchase Online Survey for the number of participants in your study.

Online Survey Pricing for Data + Scoring: You will see that the pricing structure for multi-rater assessments is very different from that of self-assessments. This is because with self-assessments we charge for each survey participant, whereas with multi-rater assessments we charge for participant subjects but not for raters. Multi-rater assessments start with a set-up fee and a small amount is added for each additional leader/participant.

Advantages to Transform vs other online survey websites:

Methods for administering self-only (or rater-only) surveys

The survey may be administered in several ways. The methods vary in the amount of effort required by the respondent to enter or participate in the survey, and in the amount of control you as a survey administrator have over the quality and characteristics of those responding.

Confidentiality: It is important to know that Mind Garden will not sell, distribute, or otherwise use the email addresses of survey participants (See our Privacy and Security policy for more information).

Email-specific invitations

With this method of administration, you import email addresses (and names or unique identifiers) into Transform. After clicking Import and then OK, Transform sends an email directly to the participant (you have the option of adding text to the Mind Garden email). The participant clicks on the link in the invitation and is taken to a login page, where they enter their email and create a password. They go directly into the survey from the login screen.

Advantage: This option gives you as a survey administrator the most control over who responds to your survey.

Disadvantage: Requires logging to take the survey, which many respondents do not like to do.

Advantage: We can turn on an option for you to "send to all Pending (incomplete) participants and raters" with the click of a button. This minimizes the time you spend sending reminders. Caution: overuse of this feature may cause potential respondents to become irritable.

Link Method

With this option of administering a survey, you will use your own email program to send the survey invitations. When you select this method, you import participant email addresses (and/or names) into Transform. The system will not send invitations. The participant will receive an email of invitation from you and will click on a link that takes them to a login page. They will login and set a password. They go directly into the survey from the login screen.

Disadvantage: we cannot turn on the option for you to "send to all Pending (incomplete) participants and raters" with the click of a button because the invitations are sent from your email program.

Advantage: Versus the Special Key Link Method below is that you have control over who takes your survey (by email identity), and the system will not let the same email enter the survey more than once.

Special Key Link Method

With this method of administering a survey, we provide a link to your campaign that you may post in places in addition to a personal email. A participant clicks on the special key link and is taken to a login page, where they will enter an email address and create a password. From there they will go directly into the survey.

In this method the customer administrator will not need to put in names and email addresses into the campaign because when a participant logs in their email is automatically added to the campaign. This method writes the email address of the respondents into the data file (you can request suppression of email addresses if desired). If a report is generated no name will appear in the report.

Disadvantage: you have no control over who takes your survey, and the same person can take the survey more than once if they login with a different email address.

Disadvantage: You may run out of licenses and participants will be blocked from entering and responding to the survey.

The appearance of the key is as follows: www.mindgarden.com/login/key/xxxxxx where xxxxxx is the campaign id. Note that this link does not automatically appear on the customer's page and MUST be provided by Mind Garden staff.

This works like a regular campaign with reports and data (and for custom surveys).

There are two ways you can purchase additional licenses while using the Special Key Link Method:

1. If you have "must buy from shopping cart" flagged on your account, a "no license" message appears when you run out of licenses and you can buy in standard quantities from the product webpage.
2. If you do not have "must buy from shopping cart" flagged on your account, the system automatically adds one license per new participant and Mind Garden will invoice you.

No-login Method

With this method of administering a survey, we provide a link to your campaign that you may post, which requires no login. This is perceived by participants to be the least invasive method of taking a survey, because it does not require them to provide an email identity.

The No Login method is designed to work with single rater instruments.

Advantage: The ease and convenience with which the participants take the survey, and no worry that their email identity will be "captured."

Advantage: With this method, you pay only for participants who actually log in, and a license is counted whether they complete the survey or not.

Disadvantage: There is little control over how many times a participant may respond to the survey (although Transform will not allow more than one survey response from the same browser on the same computer). Also, you will have no knowledge of who is responding to your survey and the licenses may be used up by anyone who has the link to the survey.

The link is provided by campaign, and is found on the campaign's participant tab. No login is required but a cookie is written that is associated with that browser and computer for 30 days. If a participant completes the assessment with that browser and computer, and tries to take the survey again, they will see a message that the assessment has been completed. If another browser or computer is used it is a whole new assessment and the participant can take the survey again.

If you wish to have multiple participants take the survey on the same browser and computer, the cookie needs to be deleted to start a new survey.

Bulk Upload Method

With this method of administering a survey, you will send to Mind Garden a file containing several hundred or several thousand participant emails. Mind Garden will input these emails into Transform for you, and invitations will go out immediately to the participants. Bulk upload is not available for multi-rater instruments like the MLQ. With this method, you pay only for participants who actually log in, and a license is counted whether they complete the survey or not.

Key-in Method

For customers who want to take advantage of our online scoring (raw scale scores by respondent), but whose respondents use paper and pencil surveys, we allow the key-in method. The customer simply creates false identities in the system and proceeds through the survey one respondent at a time. Data can be downloaded at any time.

Pricing is according to the difference in price between the License to Reproduce and Online Survey.

Method for administering multi-rater surveys

Email-specific invitations

With this method of administration, you import Participant email addresses (and names or unique identifiers) into Transform. After clicking Import and then OK, Transform sends an email directly to the participant. The participant clicks on the link in the invitation and is taken to a login page, where they enter their email and create a password. They go their Participant page and follow the steps to taking their self-survey and entering the names and emails of raters to rate them.

Note: we can turn on an option for you to "send to all Pending (incomplete) participants and raters" with the click of a button.

Types of output

Data plus scoring

When you use Transform to administer your survey and collect data, your survey participants take the survey online (or you may choose the key-in option, where they take it via paper/pencil and you input the data later). As participants respond, the data is collected for that campaign and you may download it any number of times. The data file is structured with one participant per row, and at the end of the row you will find raw scale scores by respondent. (Note that for the MLQ, if a respondent fails to answer an optional question, the cell in the data file will be blank and the score for that scale only will not be calculated, thereby requiring you to manually calculate that one individual scale score and allowing you to account for the blank response.)

Reports

You may choose to have Transform create reports for you, which means less of your time required for calculation of scores and more time for advanced interpretation. There are several types of reports:

• Personal Reports - the participant takes the assessment online and Transform calculates scores and interprets the meaning of the responses. Most reports contain a good amount of meaningful interpretive text and developmental tips.
  List of Personal Reports
  
  
• Multi-rater/360 Reports - the participant takes a self-assessment (optional), the raters rate the participant, and Transform compiles and analyzes the input. A multi-rater report is a huge timesaver, and can provide the survey administrator and/or the participant with a great deal of interpretive information, as well as a tremendous base for advanced interpretation.
  List of Multi-rater/360 Reports
  
  
• Group Reports - participants take survey/assessment. This output option allows the administrator or researcher to have Mind Garden create a report based on all participant and rater input. Group reports can be run on self or multi-rater assessments.
  List of Group Reports
  
  

3. Customize a Mind Garden instrument to use it online with Transform, our online system. Add demographic questions, or even add other instruments. This service category also includes an option to customize a report.

Customizing a survey form/questionnaire

Mind Garden provides a fee-based customization service which allows the addition of demographic questions, informed consent -- and even other instruments (scoring too!) -- to a Mind Garden instrument. The base price is $150, which usually includes up to 10 simple demographic questions. This customization process is a huge timesaver if you do not know -- or do not wish to know -- how to create a survey from scratch.

If you would like us to customize a survey for you, first send us all of the text of what you'd like to add to the instrument. We will send a firm estimate of the cost of customization (which is separate from the license cost). Upon your approval we will send you an invoice. Upon payment and receipt of all exact text you wish to add, we will begin the work. We request 8 business days to do the work and will provide a preview of your survey form prior to purchase of the licenses.

The customization includes 2 editing sessions after first draft; additional sessions over 2 may be charged for at least $50 each.

List of Online Surveys

Customizing a Report

Mind Garden can customize a report for you. You must collect your data via Transform, and we will work with you to adapt an existing report to your needs, or even build a new report for you. Contact Mind Garden for a cost estimate.

More about Mind Garden's Transform system

Transform is a human assessment system that creates a unique identity for your participants. This means you can do self-assessment and assessment of the same person over time or across many instruments. Some instruments are multi-rater where the person can assess themselves and others can rate them. A participant can even rate their social environment. Since each person has an identity, all data you collect from or about a person stays linked to that person. You may even want to enter external criterion data or collect demographics from them.

The design of the Mind Garden Transform person assessment system comes from the research method practiced at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) at University of California at Berkeley (now the Institute of Personality and Social Research). The design creates an enduring identity for each participant across all assessments and data.

Having a wealth of information associated with a person is a powerful method for research and psychological instrument development. The Transform system can link together self ratings, observer ratings, environmental assessment across multiple instruments and across multiple times rated.

A characterization of research with the IPAR model can be found in the book Portraits of Type: An MBTI Research Compendium by Avril Thorne and Harrison Gough (CAPT, 1999).

The Nature of the Assessments

Each member of a sample was seen in intensive one- to three-day assessments at the Institute. … Typically, 15 to 18 observers studied the assessees at the Institute in groups of 10. The assesses were interviewed two or three times, were asked to take a wide assortment of cognitive, interest, and personality tests, and were observed by the staff in a variety of situations such as leaderless group discussions, role-plays, and meals. On the basis of these observations, but without knowledge of any of the test scores, staff members independently assigned trait rating, Q-sort formulations, and adjectival descriptions to each individual. These observations, or O-data, provide a rich fund of information that can be used to help clarify and define the meaning of self-report measures of personality such as the MBTI. (pages 5 and 6)