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