Access for non-profit survey data?

[Safetymonkey]

Hello,

I am a new forum user, and a new access user. I have a few questions I'm hoping the community can help me with as I get my feet wet with Access. I have quite a bit of experience doing data analysis in Excel, and have limited experience with SQL and other queries - but I've never built or worked with an Access database.

I recently began volunteering with a local non-profit, and part of that work could include doing quite a bit of data analysis in Access and SBSS. There are two main questions I'm hoping this group can help me with.

First; I'm currently teaching myself Access and need to get to a baseline proficiency as quickly as possible (in a matter of weeks). I have been using Youtube videos to get the basics, but are there any resources you would specifically recommend for a beginner to use to learn quickly? Books, reference sites, tutorials online, etc? I will need to be able to run queries and do analysis on a decently sized data base (50 question survey of approx. 4000 people) within the next 4-6 weeks.

My second question is a little trickier; the same non-profit is currently seeking a database option for them to store all of their survey and demographic information in. The survey I will be working on for question one is required to be used in Access as part of the contact, but they conduct their own surveys separately and need a consistent platform. Several years ago they hired an outside consulting firm to build a database for them, but the firm went under and they had no ongoing support, so the data base has not been maintained. I thought Access might be a good fit, especially as this contract will require myself and others of the staff to become proficient anyway. I have done some reading online, but have not seen other non-profits mentioning using it for this. They conduct 40-50 question surveys in several locations several times a year, and need to be able to track, correlate and compare data from each location individually and collectively. Would this be a good fit for Access? What would be the largest advantages and drawbacks to using Access for this type of data management?



I really appreciate any help you can offer on either of these questions. I have loved learning to use Excel over the past few years, and expect I'll find a similar passion for Access, once I can get my head around it.

Rob

[June7]

Try http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/

Questionnaire/survey database has been a topic of numerous threads. Try searching forum. A common issue I see is that users want to see a data entry form that looks like the 'paper' questionnaire - with all questions listed and input box next to each. Therefore many novice developers design table so each responder has one record with a field for each question response. This is not a normalized relational database structure because if new questions are added would require modification of table, queries, forms, reports, code. There is a limit of 255 fields in a table, obviously only 50 questions will not hit that limit, but the potential is there. Non-normalized structure can be handled but can complicate many analysis procedures.