PHASE A: IDENTIFICATION OF SIX PRIORITY INITIATIVES
Survey 2 respondents reviewed and prioritized the top ten Suggested Actions.
As well, they were asked to indicate their level of support and agreement with the six highest ranked Suggested Actions from Survey 1.
In July 2016, Survey 1 was sent to all Ontario veterinarians licenced with the CVO, who indicated involvement with foodproducing animals. Respondents were asked to choose up to six Suggested Actions they felt were the most important, and to rank these by order of importance. As well, respondents provided their perceptions of potential efficacy of each Suggested Action, and provided input on how the Suggested Actions might be achieved.
Once the analysis of Survey 1 was complete, Survey 2 was created. Six Suggested Actions included in Survey 1 were removed from the list of Suggested Actions to be considered in Survey 2, based on low ratings in Survey 1.
In September 2016, Survey 2 was sent to all Ontario veterinarians licenced with the CVO, who indicated involvement with food-producing animals, irrespective of whether they had completed Survey 1. Survey 2 respondents reviewed and prioritized the top ten Suggested Actions. As well, they were asked to indicate their level of support and agreement with the six highest ranked Suggested Actions from Survey 1.
All data were transferred from Survey MonkeyTM to Microsoft Excel ©, where the data were cleaned and coded for analysis. With all cleaning and coding complete, the dataset was imported into STATA 12 / IC © for statistical analysis. All respondent answers were descriptively analyzed using frequency counts.
For all categorical survey questions employing Likert scales, the two positive responses,“ important” and“ very important” and the two negative responses,“ unimportant” and“ very unimportant”, were collapsed to generate one positive variable and one negative variable. For all independent categorical questions, comparisons between cohorts( i. e. Survey 1 respondents vs. Survey 2 respondents) were made using Fisher’ s Exact tests. Statistical significance for all tests was set at p < 0.05. Where appropriate, responses were stratified by demographic characteristics and explored for significant differences. Lastly, responses to open-ended questions were individually reviewed, categorized and coded based on response similarities, and tallied to provide frequency counts.
For Survey 1, analyses explored the ranking of the importance of Suggested Actions, the ranking of prioritized Suggested Actions, the identification of Suggested Actions that should be removed from the prioritized list, and respondent perceptions and comments on the specific steps that could be taken to implement each prioritized action in Ontario.
A mathematical formula was created in order to derive a single weighted rank score indicating the overall ranking of each Suggested Action, from most popular to least popular. The score was weighted by the proportion of respondents who chose the Suggested Action for their top six, and the respective rank-order. More specifically, Survey 1 permitted every respondent to give each Suggested Action that they prioritized a rank from‘ 1’ to‘ 6’, using each rank only once. This resulted in each Suggested Action receiving ranks from‘ 1’ to‘ 6’. Formula E. 1 below outlines the structure of the equation used for these analyses, which produce a weighted score( WS) for each Suggested Action.
WS j
= [( A j r1 * 6)+( A j r2 * 5)+( A j r3 * 4)+( A j r4 * 3)+( A j r5 * 2)+( A j r6 * 1)]*( A j
/ n)
Where WS is the weighted score for the jth Suggested Action( e. g. Suggested Action 1), Aj is the total number of respondents choosing the jth Suggested Action( e. g. total number of respondents choosing Suggested Action 1), Ajr # is the total number of respondents choosing the jth Suggested Action that ranked the Suggested Action as #( e. g. total number of respondents choosing and ranking it as‘ 1’), and n is the total number of respondents who completed the question.
Formula E. 1 Formula for determining weighted rank score for Suggested Actions in Survey 1
College of Veterinarians of Ontario 16