Running head: ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME?

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Online LIS Degree: Will You Hire Me?
James Loomis, Benjamin Philbrook, Jeremy Zuni
INF 397C
12/6/2010
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 2
Abstract
Our research question Does the proportion of online classes to face-to-face classes in a LIS
program affect the way prospective employers perceive the professional capabilities of those
who earn degrees via online LIS programs? examines employers attitudes toward graduates of
online Library and Information Science (LIS) programs. Our data collection method will consist
first of a seven-item multiple-choice questionnaire administered online in which a respondent
will be asked to provide his responses to various scenarios in which a hypothetical applicant
possessing particular educational and professional properties is applying for an entry-level
position. Our phenomenon of interest will be embedded in one scenario among the six other
questions, each emphasizing a distinctive professional or academic attribute (e.g., the applicants
G.P.A while in university, his prior work experience in LIS, their age) so as not make our
research focus evident. Following these seven items will be an exercise in which we ask the
respondent to rank eight attributes relating to job qualification in the field of LIS, one of which
will be the importance of a face-to-face degree vs. online degree. The second section of our
data collection method will consist of a demographic questionnaire sent separately after we
receive the respondents answers to the first survey instrument; we surmise that such
demographic data might indicate trends with respect to employers hiring graduates of online LIS
programs. Finally, our data analysis will employ both descriptive and inferential statistics to
examine the responses of the informants, quantified on Likert scales. We will generate a
frequency distribution, calculate the three measures of central tendency, and also calculate the
standard deviation of the mean. We contend such measurements could provide us with data
showing that members of the sample group do indeed exhibit definite and quantifiable attitudes
toward LIS graduates with online degrees. Finally, we will use inferential statistics to estimate
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 3
population parameters from our sample by determining to what degree our results might be due
to chance. This measurement will be performed by establishing a 95% confidence interval in
order to gain a sense of the potential random error of our analysis based on deriving the range in
which the requisite percentage of sample means is contained.
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 4
Phenomenon of Interest/Research Question
Online masters-level Library and Information Science (LIS) degree programs have
become a desirable and convenient means for students to earn their diploma through non-
traditional forms of instruction and intellectual endeavor. In 1997, the Association of Library and
Information Science Education (ALISE) recorded in its annual statistical report that
approximately 1744 off-campus students were enrolled in ALA-accredited LIS programs
(ALISE 1997); this figure had increased by the fall of 2003 to approximately 2,684 (ALISE
2004). While such LIS graduates choose online programs for a variety of reasons (e.g., they work
full-time, they cannot commute to a university campus, and/or they simply might welcome the
novel challenge of online learning), a study by Kim and Kusack (2005) on employer perspectives
concerning distance learning found that some library-based employers have a dismissive view of
such diplomas and the requisite coursework. They specifically note that one employer surveyed
stated that s/he would not consider an applicant with a distance education degree (Kim and
Kusack, 41). Other employers not as summarily disposed to reject such a candidate said that they
would take measures to evaluate the social and communication skills of distance education
graduates (Kim and Kusack, 41). One could say that such responses imply an enduring
prejudice on the part of some that online degree programs generally lack the academic rigor and
practical experience readily afforded by a traditional, face-to-face university education.
Karen Glover, a graduate of an online LIS program who eventually became employed by
the Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote to Library Journal in 2005 of her struggle to make
herself a worthy candidate for a librarians position after receiving her degree: it never occurred
to me that I would have a hard time finding a job. Unfortunately, I am finding that many
employers view my online degree as worth less than a traditional degree [sic] (Glover, 2005, p.
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 5
39). Glover went on to note that she had been [. . .] under the impression that employers wanted
self-starters with independence and motivationthe very skills needed to be successful in an
online program (p. 39). While some employers expressed skepticism about her degree
programs quality of academic rigor as well as its attendant levels of dialogical instruction and
student-teacher interaction, Glover rejoined that the novel learning and instructional experiences
gained through such a non-traditional format made her and similar LIS graduates perhaps more
valuable than traditional degree holders:
We may be nontraditional, but that does not make us less valuable. In fact, it may
make us more valuable. We multitask and organize. Our time management skills
are impressive, and our commitment to education is unmatched. Until employers
know more about what it takes to succeed in an online program [. . .], the stigma
will remain (p. 39).
Glovers experience therefore acts as a real-world instance for the research question we
wish to explore: Does the proportion of online classes to face-to-face classes in a LIS program
affect the way prospective employers perceive the professional capabilities of those who earn
degrees via online LIS programs? While researchers have already examined the efficacy of
online learning compared to that of traditional, face-to-face instruction, they have not paid as
much attention to the professional experiences of online LIS degree-holders seeking
employment, specifically, the attitudes of employers toward applicants bearing such a degree
(Thompson, 1998, p. 9). As Kim and Kusack write, employers such as libraries act as the
ultimate arbiter of LIS degree-holders and their respective format of education (2005, p. 39).
While the act of hiring an applicant may not directly or immediately influence the content of an
[LIS] education program, employers have a powerful influence on [LIS] education by
determining which graduates are hired (p. 39). Kim and Kusack cite another researcher, Marcia
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 6
Linn, who observes that graduates of distance education programs exhibit particular qualities,
specifically, autonomous learning (which is distinct from the passive and active varieties), in
order to make their form of instruction fully effective (Linn, 1996, p. 826). Therefore, it
appears that LIS employers will have to address a significant burden in their hiring criteria by
assessing the differing qualities and strengths of the applicant with an online LIS degree
compared to those possessed by one who earned her degree from a face-to-face program (Kim
and Kusack, 2005, p. 39).
Whether employers are in fact addressing this very real evolution in LIS education
provokes several related and intriguing questions for potential future consideration: What is the
state of LIS education today? What is central to an LIS degree, given the broadening
professionalization and interdisciplinarity of the field? Are employers in a place to judge
recipients of online degrees, especially if they have no experience with, or knowledge of, the
requirements of such programs? For the time being, we intend our study to provide insight into
employers current attitudes toward LIS applicants possessing online degrees. This intention
carries several major assumptions pertaining to our project: first, that our respondents have
attitudes (favorable or otherwise) about online LIS students and education; second, that our
survey instrument can provide a reliable measurement of this phenomenon; and third, that the
respondents composing our sample group in the large study will be representative of the LIS
employer population. Terms used in our study that require definition are:
attitude: the quality (or degree?) of favor/disfavor shown by an LIS employer toward a
job candidate possessing an online degree
entry-level LIS job/position: the lowest position of employment at an LIS-oriented
institution open to an LIS degree-holder
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 7
With the above discussion in mind, the results of our study could prove valuable to LIS
employers, as well as present and future LIS students and degree holders, particularly those
currently or previously enrolled in online programs. The findings of our research project may
give the former group a richer sense of the complex pool of LIS education, while also allowing
them to witness the prevailing considerations they and their peers emphasize in hiring or
rejecting candidates of a certain educational background. Our results could also provide similar
benefits to face-to-face and distance education students, allowing them to consider the significant
factor of their degree programs format as they enter the job market upon earning their diplomas.
Finally, current data analysis might provide evidence that employers have withdrawn some of
their earlier skepticism concerning online degrees, replacing it with a willingness to employ
those LIS graduates with an online educational background.
The Proliferation of Distance Learning in Library and Information Science Education
Although distance education (sometimes abbreviated as DE) only recently integrated the
use of online technology, the concept of distance learning has existed since the 1840s when Isaac
Pitman offered distance learning via correspondence to teach shorthand (Moore, 2005). Library
Science was quick to follow this trend, when in 1888 Melville Dewey, creator of the Dewey
Decimal system, began offering correspondence courses for specialized library staff (Vann,
1971). In comparable fashion, the University of Illinois offered courses via the Internet in the
1990s (Barron, 2002), and one of the first online LIS classes started in 1995 as part of the
Library Education Experimental Program (LEEP) at its Urbana-Champaign campus. Since then,
online courses have grown increasingly popular, both as a way for students to take courses
allowing for flexible scheduling and for colleges to increase enrollment without requiring as
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 8
many physical resources as face-to-face (sometimes abbreviated as FTF) classes do. Data
retrieved from the National Center for Education Statistics (2010) shows that approximately
3200 colleges out of 7000 in the U.S. currently offer some form of distance education for
students. According to the ALAs database of accredited colleges, Library Science follows this
trend: of the 57 ALA-accredited schools, 22 offer Face-to-face courses at other locations, 25
offer Primarily face-to-face with select online courses offered, 13 offer Primarily online with
some face-to-face courses required, 11 offer Satellite or other broadcast methods and 19 offer
100% online program[s] (ALA, 2010).
In studying the way online classes produce results and impact students, researchers have
explored the subject from a variety of angles. They have conducted numerous studies on the
effectiveness of DE in its many forms, and the general consensus has been that the effectiveness
of learning is neither hindered nor helped by new forms of technology (Aragon, 2002); instead,
such efficacy relies primarily on a student's personal motivations (Neuhauser, 2002). The
cumulative conclusions of these studies indicate the success of DE courses depends primarily on
whether the students are personally engaged, motivated to work, and have the desire to excel in
the class. It is important to note that, since these studies focus almost exclusively on students
who self-select by enrolling in online classes, the results do not necessarily provide strong causal
evidence (Adams, 2008).
Researchers have also examined the satisfaction of students with distance learning
courses. Overall, the majority of students respond in studies that distance learning courses are
equivalent to their FTF counterparts (Allen, 2002). The same results occur for students of online
MLIS programs, indicating that the design and rigor of the program tend to have the largest
impact on student satisfaction, regardless of the form of delivery (Montague, 2007). To ensure
the quality of both student satisfaction and instructional effectiveness, many of the more
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 9
successful programs such as LEEP maintain a focus on developing and improving the program's
rigor. The expectation is that face-to-face schools and professional organizations will show
increased acceptance concerning the adequacy of online programs when compared to those that
are predominantly FTF (Smith, et al., 2001). As with the research concerning the success of DE
courses, the body of literature on student satisfaction contains an important and recurring
limitation: these studies either look at different students enrolled in DE and FTF versions of the
same class, or compare DE and FTF classes taken by individual students. This model of analysis
may be the best current approximation for studying DE versus FTF, particularly when
considering the formidable challenges involved in creating a study scenario where identical DE
and FTF courses could be taken simultaneously by study participants. Such an investigation
would allow considerable room for sources of error to affect the results, which would then need
to be interpreted accordingly.
The last major area of interest, and the one that our study focuses on, is the acceptance of
online classes and degree programs by employers when making hiring decisions. For many
employers and students (Gonzalez, 2007), the strongest concern between online and traditional
classes is that the online course may not provide the same learning opportunities as the
traditional course (Kongrith, 2004, p.2). The concern over learning effectiveness is especially
true for graduate degrees earned online, which are viewed as less acceptable than bachelors or
technical degrees earned online (Adams, 2008). A degree earned in this manner is generally
considered less rigorous than its FTF or even partially online counterpart (Adams, 2006) and can
potentially hinder the ability of students to find employment after graduation. In the field of
Library and Information Science, the overall reception toward applicants with online degrees has
actually been more positive than in other disciplines (Wynkoop, 2003), even though assumptions
and some anecdotal evidence have indicated otherwise (Oder, 2002). Many employers in the LIS
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 10
field have shown limited interest with the format of the degree, instead displaying more concern
for the rigor and thoroughness of the degree-holders instruction (Gonzalez, 2007). Often during
job interviews there may be no mention from the applicant whether degrees were earned online,
and interviewers often do not ask about any distance education components (Kim, 2005). It is
also not common practice for job applicants to indicate on a rsum or curriculum vitae the
amount of a degree, if any, earned through DE. While some colleges exclusively offer DE
degrees in LIS (ALA, 2010), allowing one to readily identify graduates of such programs, the
burden remains on employers to ask direct questions during the interview process if they
consider the topic of DE significant.
Although evidence appears to indicate that online degrees are well accepted among LIS
employers, prior studies have not made a comprehensive effort to eliminate all forms of bias.
One weakness we hope to overcome from these prior studies is the reliance almost exclusively
on direct question surveys; no accounting is made for the subject-expectancy effect, since the
survey instruments asked respondents directly about their attitudes about FTF versus DE courses.
Hopefully our study will be able to add some knowledge to the current understanding of attitudes
toward DE in the hiring of LIS graduates.
Understanding Employers Attitudes toward Online LIS Degrees
Our initial study will focus on institutions in and around Austin, Texas, with proposed
methods and framework for additional study on a larger scale across the country. Since we are
specifically interested in the perceptions of prospective employers about graduates of LIS
programs, we will be limiting our study to institutions typically employing graduates of these
programs: libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions focusing primarily on the
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 11
management of information resources. The first step is identifying which types of organizations
are most associated with hiring LIS graduates. Utilizing 2009 data from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics we will develop a framework for determining which categories of local organizations to
survey. We will consult with Tara Iagulli (the iSchool Director of Career Services) to identify
appropriate local LIS institutions and individuals therein who are involved in the process of
hiring new employees. Finally, we will search Web sites, such as Libjobs.com and the UT
iSchool JobWeb, where employers advertise open LIS positions, and include in our list of
potential respondents people within appropriate institutions seeking to hire LIS graduates for
entry-level positions. Once we have developed a list of institutions and organizations to survey,
we will identify the individuals responsible for hiring by questioning the institutions themselves;
these individuals will constitute our potential sample set. For the smaller portion of the study that
we performed this semester, our sample consisted of three men responsible for hiring employees
in LIS institutions in Austin, Texas. These individuals were suggested as possible candidates by
Dr. Philip Doty, and when we contacted the potential respondents through email, they readily
agreed to participate.
Once we have developed our potential sample set we will distribute a brief online
questionnaire for each individual to complete. This method of gathering local respondents has
some limitations, as does this method of data collection. First, people in the Austin area may be
aware of and influenced by the University of Texas iSchool and the structure of its LIS program.
UTs iSchool retains a focus on face-to-face classes and offers only a small number of online
classes as part of its Masters of Science in Information Studies (an LIS-equivalent degree)
program. For example, in the Spring of 2011, there are only three different courses offered online
(University of Texas School of Information, 2010). Second, using an online questionnaire means
that individuals who regularly use a computer to access the Internet may be more likely to
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 12
respond compared to those who do so infrequently, if at all. It is possible that such respondents
might be more willing to accept a graduate with an online degree, which would create bias.
There is, however, no certainty that regular Internet users would necessarily be more willing to
hire a graduate of an online LIS program than would potential respondents rarely using the
Internet. People who refuse to respond due to a dislike of using electronic resources will not be
included in our results, and we will be unable to account for their perception of online classes.
Third, our study will focus on entry-level employment and cannot account as to how employer
perception of online classes may differ when considering LIS graduates for positions requiring
more experience and/or specialization.
There are, however, various benefits to using a self-administered questionnaire for the
purpose of data collection. One benefit to having respondents complete the survey instrument
remotely will be that they will be unable to associate any of the researchers as being the
hypothetical graduate in the specific question containing our research interest; such an
association could otherwise lead to bias concerning their perception of the statement. The online
format and relative simplicity of the questionnaire may lead to a higher response rate than those
instruments requiring more time or demanding the physical presence of the participants; our
respondents can devote a relatively modest amount of time to the online survey instrument,
completing it at their leisure.
The questionnaire will consist of seven multiple-choice questions. Each will describe a
scenario in which an applicant is applying for an entry-level position at the respondents LIS
institution. Each emphasizes an applicants possession of a particular academic, professional, or
personal characteristic. The respondent will then be asked to indicate, using a Likert scale, if the
information given about the applicant in each question would increase, not affect, or decrease the
likelihood of her hiring the applicant. In this way, we are asking the respondent to rate different
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 13
possible criteria or qualifications as important in the respondent determining whether to hire an
individual. One of these scenarios will be that the applicant received his ALA-accredited LIS
degree in an online degree program. Other questions will include such information as an
applicants age, graduation from a program that is currently under conditional ALA-accreditation
(defined by the ALA as a status assigned to a program that must make changes to comply with
the 1992 Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies to
enable accreditation beyond the date specified by the Committee on Accreditation), G.P.A.,
volunteer experience in an LIS institution, membership in LIS student organizations, and the
amount of group work required for the masters degree.
Those questions about criteria or qualifications unrelated to whether the applicant
graduated from an online LIS degree program or a face-to-face program serve two purposes.
First, including other variables for judging an applicant will not give the respondent an
awareness of our question of interest, thus reducing the chance that she will respond in
accordance with what she may think the researchers want to hear. This phenomenon, termed the
expectancy effect, is defined by Katzer, Krook, and Crouch as a potential bias caused by the
researchers expectations being communicated to subjects (1998, p. 271). To minimize the risk
of such an occurrence, the respondent will know only that we are studying different criteria that
employers of LIS graduates deem important when hiring for entry-level positions. Secondly,
these other criteria will provide us with data to which we can compare the respondents answers
about online programs. For example, the results could indicate that respondents consider
acquiring a degree from a face-to-face program important, but not as crucial as other criteria such
as the applicants G.P.A or work experience.
Following these seven multiple-choice questions the questionnaire will ask the
respondent to rank in order of decreasing importance eight different qualifications or attributes
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 14
that they might take into account when considering an applicant for an entry-level position. The
eight items will be: applicant age, graduation from an ALA-accredited masters program, G.P.A.,
involvement with LIS-related student groups or organizations, online vs. face-to-face degree,
amount of practical experience with group work required in the LIS program, amount of
volunteer experience in libraries and other LIS organizations, and the amount of work experience
in LIS organizations. The respondents ranking of face-to-face degree vs. online degree among
these other criteria will indicate more specifically than the Likert scale result does how important
they personally consider the difference between an online and a face-to-face LIS degree program
to be. This question will not, however, ask that the respondent prefer the applicant earn one type
of degree over the other. We expect the results will provide data that will be valuable in
comparing how the respondents rank this consideration with respect to other qualifications or
variables about the potential employee.
Lastly, after the respondent has completed the questionnaire, there will be an additional
set of demographic questions to answer; this set will be sent after the participant has completed
the first part of the survey instrument. The participant will not be able to go back and change her
initial answers due to finding out new information about our research interest contained in these
demographic questions. These questions will include the respondents age, gender, length of time
working in an LIS field, level of education, where she received her LIS degree, the type of LIS
institution for which she hires LIS graduates, and finally, her personal experience with online
classes. This information could be useful in understanding potential trends in the type of
individual that would be more or less willing to hire a graduate of an online LIS degree program.
For instance, past experience with online classes may have a positive or negative influence on
the respondents opinions of online programs. The answers to this question should give us data
on whether respondents that have taken online classes before are more or less likely to hire
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 15
graduates of online LIS degree programs. It may also be the case, however, that with respect to
this subject, there is no difference of opinion between respondents who have experience with
online classes and those who do not.
One limitation of the smaller portion of our survey that we perform this semester is that,
concerning the demographic questions, our three respondents are quite similar in their personal
and professional backgrounds. If there is a noteworthy relationship between employers opinions
regarding online versus face-to-face degree programs and their hiring of LIS graduates for entry-
level positions, our data analysis of the smaller portion of the study will most likely be missing
that information. If there were systematic differences between demographic groups concerning
our research question, there could be a bias in our study based on the data given by these three
respondents. The overall survey, however, will have a larger sample size that should be more
heterogeneous, thus reducing this bias.
For the smaller portion of the survey we perform this semester, we will be using
surveymonkey.com to distribute our questionnaires to the three respondents. Due to limitations
with the software tools this online service offers as part of its Basic plan of use, when our
respondents return the first survey, we will have to manually send them links to the second
survey. We will then have to match IP addresses of the first and second surveys to ensure the
demographic data matches the correct respondents first set of answers. In the overall study, this
will not be possible; we will most likely purchase access to the services Pro plan. With the
software tools we have access to by selecting this option, when a respondent finishes the first
survey, the second will automatically be sent to her, and the two sets of results will be
anonymously linked for us to analyze.
Data Analysis
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 16
To analyze our data we will employ both descriptive and inferential statistics. The
questionnaire, based on a Likert scale, will indicate whether the information stated in each
question (in our central question of interest, this information will be that the applicant graduated
from an ALA-accredited school at which the coursework was done entirely online) would
significantly increase the likelihood that the employer would hire the applicant, moderately
increase that likelihood, not affect the likelihood, moderately decrease the likelihood of hiring, or
significantly decrease the likelihood of hiring the applicant. We will quantify each of these
responses as they are listed above, 1 through 5, where 1 represents a significant increase in the
employers likelihood of hiring, 2 represents a moderate increase in her likelihood of hiring, and
so on through 5, which represents a significant decrease in the likelihood that the applicant will
be hired. This scale has been created in order to code each response in such a way that we may
apply descriptive and inferential statistics to the data.
We will commence by generating a frequency distribution for the responses to the
question concerning the applicant who graduated with an entirely online, but ALA-accredited
LIS degree. This distribution will allow us to quickly see the frequency of each score and then
calculate what percent of participants responded with each of the five possible answers. We will
calculate the arithmetic mean of the responses of the sample. An arithmetic mean calculated from
one response of significantly increase the likelihood of hiring the applicant, or a score of 1, and
one response of significantly decrease the likelihood of hiring the applicant, or 5, would result
in the number three, but this is not a very clear or meaningful way to demonstrate the central
tendency of the sample. Additionally, the intervals between responses are not equal. The
difference between no affect, moderately affect, and significantly affect have not been
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 17
defined, so calculations on these numbers will provide only a rough idea of a respondents
opinions.
For this reason, along with the arithmetic mean, we will also calculate the median and
mode of the sample. These other measures of central tendency may give more substantial results.
The mode in particular will be important in understanding the respondents opinions about hiring
the graduate of an online MLS program. We will also calculate and report the standard deviation
of the mean. Calculating the central tendencies of the quantified data will show whether the
sample of respondents exhibits a discernible tendency in deciding whether to hire an applicant
who has graduated from an online, but ALA accredited, masters program. We will perform these
calculations for the large study, as well as for the smaller study this semester. With such a small
sample size, it is possible that these findings, as with the arithmetic mean, might not be very
representative of the population.
Once we have performed these calculations to understand the responses of our sample,
we will use inferential statistics to estimate the population parameters from the statistics of our
sample, and to determine the likelihood that the results based on the responses of this particular
sample could be due to chance. We will generate a 95% confidence interval based on the
measures of central tendency of the sample. This will give a range of responses that, for all
possible samples, there is a 95% probability that the population mean will exist. In the full study,
we will attempt to recruit a large sample size, which will increase the degree of freedom used to
determine the Students t-score. A smaller Students t-score will generate a narrower 95%
confidence interval, which in turn will give a clearer indication of the range of scores in which
we anticipate a 95% probability that the mean will exist, given all possible samples. In our
smaller part of the study to be performed this semester, we will also generate a 95% confidence
interval. With only three respondents, the degree of freedom we will use to generate a Students
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 18
t-score will be 2, which means the Students t-score will be relatively large. This will create a
wide confidence interval, giving a less clear estimate of the population parameter from the
sample statistic. Even with the limited data gathered, such a measurement still provides an
estimate of the population and is therefore worth calculating. The range of numbers we calculate
relates directly to the concepts the numbers stand for. A range between 1 and 3 would seem to
indicate that employers would be more inclined to hiring an applicant with an online LIS degree.
A range between 3 and 5 would seem to indicate the opposite, namely, that employers would be
less willing to do so. A score centered around 3 might suggest that an applicants receiving an
online degree does not significantly affect the probability that an employer will hire her.
For the last question, in which we ask respondents to rank in order of importance eight
different qualifications or facts regarding a potential applicant, we will begin our calculation by
ordering the ranks from least important (1) to most important (8), the opposite of how they were
ordered in the question itself. We will add the numbered rankings for each attribute. This will
provide an aggregate sum of the importance of each one, with a higher assigned numerical value
increasing its importance. Then, dividing each of these sums by the number of respondents will
give us the mean of the respective traits relative importance. Comparing these means may be
helpful in addressing how much importance respondents give to earning an online rather than a
face-to-face degree in comparison to other potential qualifications or facts about a potential
applicant. We will also calculate standard deviations of these means to further our understanding
of the results. In the future large study, we will use inferential statistics to attempt to estimate the
importance that the population gives to receiving an online degree rather than a degree from a
face-to-face program in comparison to the other qualifications and facts about an applicant. This
is not possible with our current data, though, as we would require a larger sample size, so we will
not perform these calculations for our current data set.
ONLINE LIS DEGREE: WILL YOU HIRE ME? 19
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