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Survey: Time management issues in the fire service
General Statement: As fire department funding becomes scarcer, personnel are asked to do more with less. Time is a resource to be used as wisely as any engine or ladder. Being an effective firefighter or officer commences with organizational and time management skills. However, few are ever taught these skills--they are just expected to have and use them daily.
Purpose of the questionnaire: Prior to embarking upon any educational regime, a baseline must be established. Once the baseline is established and the need recognized, charting a learning course is the next logical step. This survey will identify a needs assessment and a baseline of learning for firefighters' time management skills. Once this foundation has been laid, the next task will be researching which time management system or systems can best benefit the fire service. Learning these new time management skills and implementing them is the ultimate goal.
Scope: The questionnaire was designed based upon the premise that a one to seven scale having a neutral of four. One, two and three being negative numbers and five, six, and seven being positive. This format allows for easy computation of the results.
The questionnaire has the feature of importance as the main component.
Importance: These questions were chosen to illustrate how important the reader feels time management is in their daily life with an emphasis on work life. Although effective time management abilities will spill over and enhance their home life as well. The results of this survey will be analyzed using a standard statically analysis program and shared with the Fire Engineering readership in future articles.
Instructions: Download the questionnaire to your computer by clicking HERE and saving the file to your computer, then open the file (the file is an Excel spreadsheet). Answer the first five questions with "Yes" or "No." Rank each of the other statements with a score of 1-7 according to importance, with 1 representing "Not important at all" and 7 representing "Very important," and 4 being neutral (the entire scale appears at the top of the Excel file). Once you're done with the survey, save the file and e-mail it to Peter Prochilo at peterp@pennwell.com. The file will then be forwarded to the engineers of this study, Don Kirkham, Ph.D., and Captain James P. Reardon III of the Liberty Township (OH) Fire Department.
The survey: http://downloads.pennnet.com/fe/misc/timemanagementsurvey.xls
