Expert survey and analysis of the results

Abstract

The issues of organizing an expert survey and carrying out statistical processing and analysis of the results are considered. The experts are the fifth-year students undergoing training at the Department of Management and Informatics «Moscow Power Engineering Institute» of the National Research University. The goal of the survey is revealing the disciplines that are most useful for employment in their specialty. We discuss the special features of the survey and a concept of «work in the specialty», with due regard for statistical reliability of the results. Data of written questionnaire gained in 2018 were processed and analyzed using cluster analysis (construction of dendrograms and application of the K-means method) and non-parametric statistical criteria (Friedman and Mann – Whitney – Wilcoxon). Data processing is implemented in the program STATISTICA. The analysis is carried out to reveal significant differences between the educational courses and assess the degree of consistency of the respondents to divide them into clusters that unite the students with similar judgments. Data analysis revealed that experts’ estimates in 2018 are in fairly good agreement with the estimates of previous studies; among the respondents there are three coalitions corresponding to the training modules «Software», «Management Theory», «Data Analysis»; the overall consistency of students in the two groups is very low (and, on the contrary, high in the identified clusters); grades are homogeneous and do not depend on training groups (and employment – unemployment of the respondents). The obtained results allow us to address a number of important questions regarding the ways of improving the educational process, e.g., to optimize yearly course hours for different educational modules.