Generation of Automated Reports and Matching Using Online Surveys and Collaborative Filtering
A method and apparatus for providing targeted online compensation reports that accounts for unique individual job characteristics by using dynamic profiles is described. The invention uses a survey engine having a collaborative filtering engine that determines appropriate questions to ask the user during the survey, and may further provide suggested possible answers. A collection of user profiles is used for comparison purposes and to produce additional individualized compensation reports.
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/748,968, filed Dec. 29, 2003, now allowed, which claims the benefit of Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/436,809, filed Dec. 27, 2002, each of which is incorporated herein in its entirety, by this reference thereto.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to correlating statistical records. More particularly, the invention relates to correlating compensation records to unique individual profiles.
2. Background of the Invention
Today, many reports are available that allow a user to find, read, purchase, or otherwise acquire reports on worker compensation. Most often these reports indicate average pay rates by industry, job type, locale, and sometimes they report more specific information about a particular industry or job, such as bonuses, stock options, average workweek, or immigration status, among other things. To create such compensation reports two approaches are typically used. One such approach is for a human analyst to research and find a statistically valid number of individuals with like characteristics, and devise a suite of compensation reports. This process is tedious, labor intensive, and often expensive. For a truly detailed report the analyst must be relied on to do substantial investigation and synthesize and apply this information to the case at hand. Compensation consultants with years of experience and resources can generally accurately profile an individual's worth in the market place, however such an analysis is extremely specialized and out of the reach of the typical consumer. Simpler and less costly reports are available but they are generally broadly classed and offer little utility.
The majority of software-based analysis provides a less expensive alternative but yields correspondingly limited information. Compensation services using current computer analysis programs generally gather data using some form of questionnaire and then feed the appropriate data into a computer database or spreadsheet. More typically, generalized data, such as from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, is used as a base and then extrapolated based on region and date, and often combined with third party surveys. Typically, a computer then is instructed to run an analysis of the data to provide statistical information, such as averages, medians, and standard deviations on pre-determined groups of people. However the information provided is not unique to an individual, but instead, is a conglomeration of data that the program determines best represents the individual. Because the categorization of the individual is based solely on a limited, predetermined set of responses to the questionnaire, it offers little to no opportunity for evaluating unique characteristics. For example, an automated compensation service may categorize and calculate data showing that the average yearly salary of a “Computer Programmer Level 3” in Washington state is $64,250. This may or may not be applicable to a “Senior Application Software Engineer” with “10 years of experience” and special training in the skill “C++,” but because the closest answer describing the Senior Application Software Engineer's position in the initial survey was a “Computer Programmer Level 3,” the Senior Application Software Engineer has thus been categorized ineffectively, which removes any unique abilities that he may possess.
The Senior Application Software Engineer reading the aforementioned report cannot be sure how closely the published report figures apply to himself individually. There are a multitude of factors that affect any one individual's job compensation. The current generalized reporting methods for compensation reports, cannot and do not incorporate factors that provide for an accurate job comparison and compensation analysis for individual users. Today's methods require the user to gauge or self-approximate themselves to a group of people being reported. Typically, such approximations are grouped by a specific job title that a human compensation analyst predetermines when creating a report, or when designing a computer service that eventually generates the report. This grouping is generally not an exact match with the user's actual job title and responsibilities and often has little applicability to the users individual qualities. For example, the compensation analyst might have created a report for an isolated group called Computer Programmer Level 3. For individuals who possess the same characteristics as the data files used to create this group, the reports generated from such a compensation analysis are reasonably accurate. However, for individuals possessing unique capabilities, experiences, skills, or talents, the reports are essentially useless. The data are by definition misapplied because any differences in the compared data are arbitrarily reflected in the compensation report. This introduces doubt on the user's part as to how closely he can trust the report's applicability.
Current compensation analysis techniques do not provide users with affordable, accurate, and personalized compensation reports. Job specific variables, critical to the accurate assessment of an individual's worth, are not correctly identified or uniformly applied. Furthermore individuals within a particular field are unaware of the value of certain, often easily obtainable, qualifications. There is a need, therefore, for an apparatus and method that provides online compensation reports using a more flexible survey system to produce dynamic profiles based on unique individual attributes, and to provide automated comparisons and reports that account for these attributes.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTIONIn one embodiment of the invention, profiles are used to produce individualized compensation reports. A survey engine is used to produce profiles of individuals that identify the individuals' unique characteristics. The survey engine incorporates a collaborative filtering engine that determines appropriate questions to ask the user during the survey, and also provides suggested possible answers. Additionally, the system allows for the use of open-text questions that allow for new answers to be input by the user, without the prior need for an administrator to pre-define the possible values for the system, as is typical in prior art. The system incorporates affinity groups around profile attributes (question answers), providing a basis for gauging similarity of profiles for various comparison and aggregation purposes. A collaborative filtering engine is incorporated, which is both periodically modified by an administrator, and also tuned by users themselves based on their actions and responses. New affinity groups (associations of profiles) are incorporated by the survey engine to suggest new questions and possible answers in a survey. Additionally, some affinity groups are generated automatically by the system, and finally by users themselves to create new, interesting relationships among profiles.
The collaborative filtering engine enables the capture of profile attributes that are targeted compensation variables concerning a profile. The system automatically incorporates new profiles into existing affinity groups, which allows more targeted survey questions and possible answers to be determined, without requiring constant human training or intervention.
Without a collaborative filtering system, the system would be unable to administer surveys accurately for users who do not fit into pre-defined categories because it is currently impossible to categorize every occupational variation. Because the system allows for open-text answers to questions, and because the system provides for different questions to be automatically determined and asked for differing types of user job profile, the collaborative filtering system, along with affinity groups and other requirements, is employed. Because the collaborative filtering system allows for the system to make educated guesses within defined constraints, the system can handle new categorizations more effectively than a system wholly defined by a human administrator. Additionally, in this system, the administrator defines constraints that prohibit the survey from asking obviously wrong or out of place questions. An example of a constraint is requiring that if the user does not answer any of the suggested questions, a default question is always asked.
One aspect of using a collaborative filtering system to define a survey is that the system accommodates a much larger population of data using a more targeted survey. Previous implementations of compensation surveys relied on a smaller sample size, a broad survey with generalized questions, or a larger base of analysts to design and conduct surveys and categorize the data. Thus, the survey was constrained purely by the human resources needed to conduct it. The invention described herein is not constrained as such and requires far fewer human resources to conduct such a detailed survey across many different job categories.
Another aspect of the invention comprises the ability to search through the data that has been collected by the survey engine, using detailed search criteria defined by a search definition document. The document applies a scoring and filtering mechanism that returns the most appropriate set of profiles based on the user's goal for the analysis. The search document is useful because it allows an administrator to define natural relationships between profile attributes, such as those that apply routinely to the realm of compensation analysis of various classes of profiles. The document is then interpreted by a software algorithm, and used during the retrieval of relevant profiles, which can then be used for tallying and reporting. Multiple search definition documents can be created quickly, each one for a different goal. For example, one search goal may be to weight skills and certifications very highly. The results are useful for analyzing how people with similar technical skills are compared to each other. Another search definition document could weight experience and education higher, which is useful in seeing how a user compares to those profiles who have similar experience and education levels. A third example could be to hold location constant, and compare a user to all other profiles with matching attributes in the same location.
Another aspect of the invention comprises the automated ability to summarize and present the results of a profile search in a format that is useful to a human for compensation comparisons. A Chart is defined as a series of values, such as skills paired, with a series of measures, such as average salary, median salary, standard deviation, etc. A sample chart could be called “Average Salary By Skill” and it would list each Skill along with an associated average salary. A Report is defined as a series of charts combined to provide an overall picture and analysis for a user. For instance, consider a report that aims to discover how a user compares with regard to skills and experience in similar jobs. This report incorporates many charts which are combined into a format that gives a user a good analysis and understanding of the results of the user's search goal.
The prior art approaches are unable to automate the selection of charts within a compensation report, such as determining if “Average Salary by Practice Area” is applicable to a report presented for a particular user profile. It may only be applicable to a Lawyer, for instance. The prior art typically requires that the administrator know in advance, every chart that would be relevant for a particular user. This restricts known approaches in one of two ways: either they limit the number of charts available, such that all charts are available to all compensation reports, regardless of their relevance, or they predefine different compensation reports by industry or job category, which would require a large amount of labor. In contrast, the invention described herein determines if a chart is relevant to a user based on the user's own profile, and displays it, and also only shows it if enough data exists for it to be valid statistically. An advantage of the invention herein is provided because there may be thousands of different charts of many different types, based on many different attributes and measures, and only a subset of them may apply to a particular users' compensation analysis. For instance, a Lawyer may wish to see a report concerning “Average Bonus by Number of Hours Billed per Year,” but this report may not be applicable to Teachers or CEOs. In the prior art, each of these compensation reports must be compiled by a human analyst, created at expense, or details are ignored, leaving only the most common charts in the compensation report, such as “Average Salary by Occupation and Location,” which are often the least useful to an individual trying to compare his compensation against his peers. The invention herein allows for a more targeted and relevant compensation report by focusing in an automated, scalable fashion, on attributes that are unique to a particular user, in addition to the attributes that are most common to all users.
The invention may also be used to match individual profiles to resumes because the profiles described herein are typically a subset of data gathered for a resume. For example, a user entering their profile into the system described herein could be easily matched to resumes using the same mechanisms employed to match against other profiles.
A method and apparatus for providing targeted online compensation reports that accounts for unique individual job characteristics by using dynamic profiles is described in detail herein. In the following description, numerous specific details are provided for survey flow, affinities, levels, suggest FieldGroup, suggest popular answers, save answers, profile search, scoring system, report aggregation, and rules engine. One skilled in the relevant art, however, will recognize that the invention can be practiced without one or more of the specific details, or with other symbols, methods, etc. In other instances, well-known methods or techniques are not shown, or are not described in detail, to avoid obscuring aspects of the invention.
DefinitionsFollowing are definitions used throughout the document:
Field—A single piece of information, corresponding to a particular question asked by the system, and further as shown in
FieldGroup—A set of related Fields that form a logical grouping of information into a single record, and further as shown in
Survey—A set of FieldGroups asked in a particular order, and as further shown in
AnswerValue (also Value, Answer or Attribute)—A value (piece of information) corresponding to a Field, used as a response. Examples include for the for field “City,” AnswerValues could be “Seattle,” “San Francisco,” “Miami,” and “Paris.”
Profile—A set of FieldGroups, Fields, and AnswerValues that form a logical representation of an individual person or group of people, and further as shown in
Affinity Group (or Affinity)—A grouping of profiles that share common profile attributes, and further as shown in
Affinity Definition—A Boolean representation of the common attributes shared by an affinity group. Examples for “All People who work in Law or Legal Professions,” the exemplary affinity definition include “Job=Lawyer OR Job=Attorney OR Job=District Court Judge or Industry=Legal OR Specialty=Trial Law OR etc.”
Profile Search—A detailed set of criteria used for matching profiles to other profiles and creating a scoring system that ranks the validity of the match.
Profile Search Document—A document that encompasses the criteria defined for the profile search.
Chart—An aggregation of data limited to an affinity group, in a format understandable to an end user. An example is a Bar Chart for “Average Salary By Specialty.”
Report—A set of charts combined in a specific layout to provide a detailed analysis of a profile search and comparison goal, as shown in
Every individual possesses unique distinguishing characteristics in their employment profile. These unique characteristics, even when seemingly minor, can correspond to differences in employment compensation. Being able to have a custom report that compares relevant characteristics for each individual, and having an understanding of what the market is willing to pay for the individual's abilities based on such comparison, is an important step in finding and effectively negotiating employment opportunities as well as making informed career decisions. The method and apparatus presented herein provide comparative compensation reports based on characteristics determined through a survey and a scored-attribute-matching search and reporting process.
Reference is now made to
The survey engine, through iteration, asks FieldGroups shown in
Reference is now made to
The survey engine is required to ask FieldGroups that are relevant for a particular user. Many different job profiles have different attributes that affect one's compensation. For example, a CEO may need an answer to the FieldGroup (question) Company Revenue in his/her profile, while a Lawyer might need Practice Area or Bar Association Memberships. The suggest FieldGroup algorithm is designed to ask pertinent questions of the user depending on the user's compensation analysis goal and the type of profile the user has, learned through iterative questioning. Open-text questions provide a unique challenge in automated systems because an administrator cannot anticipate them. For instance, prior art would allow for a selection of an industry from a drop-down list box containing a set of known values. Because all industries would be known to the system, logic could be added to recommend a new question based upon the answer to the previous question. In such a system, a complex decision tree is created in advance, and the system is able to create a custom survey based upon the answers given by the user. However, these systems are subject to the limitation of knowing all possible answers, and spending a significant amount of labor to program the decision tree to account for all possibilities. It also makes it very difficult to add new questions because the added responsibility of mapping each answer to the decision tree must be part of the process. The invention described herein is not subject to such limitations because it allows the entry by users of any answer, as further shown in
Because the system allows open-ended text answers, a standard expert system is not possible, as it is impossible to create a decision tree for an infinite number of questions that would make up a survey. In such situations in other art, an artificial intelligence mechanism is usually employed to deal with the unknown variances in user input concerning which questions the users answer, as well as what those answers are. The invention requires that a high degree of recall is maintained, which means a new user coming and using the system with the same set of profile data as an existing user should have the same set of FieldGroups recommended in the same order (deterministic). To accommodate these requirements, i.e., both recall and variability, the system defines relationships between FieldGroups, as further shown in
To pick the next FieldGroup to be asked of the user, the survey engine selects the most popular FieldGroup that the user has not yet answered but that is related to the FieldGroups already posed to the user, and which is also contained in the profiles of the affinity group(s) to which the user currently belongs, subject to the level constraints and FieldGroup relationships described herein. An administrator establishes the relationships and levels for FieldGroups previous to a user completing the survey. As explained earlier, the system uses a collaborative filtering architecture for the survey engine, to allow for a large number of FieldGroups, and minimal administrative input. Although a collaborative filtering architecture is used, an alternative architecture, such as a neural network can also be employed. Administrative tasks related to Suggesting FieldGroups are limited to cleaning input data that are used to teach the system, defining FieldGroup Relations, as shown in
The inputs to the survey engine are a user's previous answers as shown in
The weighted values on the Popular FieldGroups triplet are stored in a relational format. The weights represent each FieldGroup's popularity. This is defined as the number of profiles for each affinity group that have answers for that FieldGroup. Popularity is calculated by tallying up, for each FieldGroup, the number of users who have answered that FieldGroup for each affinity group, and an association between an affinity, a FieldGroup, and a popularity, and is stored in a relational table. By this mechanism, a feedback loop is created between the user's profile questions and answers, and the survey wizard. As user profiles are entered into the system via the survey process, new associations of similar profiles are produced and those results are integrated into the popularity of each corresponding Fieldgroup, yielding a subsequently more and more precise survey for differing types of job profiles.
Constraints, as shown in
Given the constraints and weights that are resident in the system, the survey engine selects amongst all the FieldGroups available for the survey the FieldGroup that is the most popular (or highest weighted) FieldGroup among the affinity groups to which the user belongs, constrained by the levels and FieldGroup relations described previously. Finally, the FieldGroup is forwarded to the user for presentation. The user answers it, and the process is repeated for subsequent questions. If, after iteration, a FieldGroup no longer can be suggested that meets the criteria discussed herein, the system marks the users survey as complete and takes a pre-defined next action, such as showing a message to the user and moving on to the reporting aspects of the system as shown in
Reference is now made to
The ‘suggest popular answers’ algorithm is constrained by the answer relations, and the answer values are weighted using a table consisting of a list of associations between a value, an affinity group, and the number of profiles who have answered that particular value. Among the constrained answers, the survey engine selects the X most popular (most highly weighted) answers among the list, where X is an integer defined by an administrator as a reasonable number of values to display, from which a user may select.
For example if a survey begins with a FieldGroup for Industry, and the FieldGroup is displayed, which asks the user about the Industry in which they work, and they respond “law,” a second FieldGroup for Law Firm, based on the process described earlier for suggested questions, is displayed and the user is asked with which law firm they are associated. Based on the Suggest Popular Answers algorithm, the engine can also provide a list of law firms that were previously provided by other users to this FieldGroup, based on those who also identified themselves in the “law” Industry. The affinity group Industry=“law” is, therefore, answer related to the FieldGroup for Law Firm because the suggested answers for the FieldGroup Law Firm are related to the answer provided by the first FieldGroup Industry. Correspondingly, for the FieldGroup Law Firm the system looks up all other FieldGroups that are answer-related to it. For example, the type of job (FieldGroup for Job) may be answer related to the affinity group associated with law firms, as may be the FieldGroup for “total hours billed per year,” etc. Therefore, because FieldGroup Job may be answer-related to FieldGroup Industry and FieldGroup Law Firm, the system suggests to the user to select his type of job from a list that includes corporate attorney, litigation attorney, paralegal, and so forth. While, if the user had answered “Computer Software” for the FieldGroup Industry, then the system would have suggested different possible answers for FieldGroup Job, such as computer programmer, senior software engineer, IT support technician, etc. Alternatively, instead of using the suggested popular answers, the user may enter a new value, and input a job title that is completely new to the system. Based on the user's responses, the system categorizes the users profile and aligns it with profiles that possess similar characteristics.
When the survey wizard displays a question, one aspect is to determine if the FieldGroup is an open FieldGroup, supporting open-text answers. An open FieldGroup is one that allows for free text entries by a user, as opposed to a closed FieldGroup, where a user may only select values from a list or use numeric answers. If the FieldGroup is in an open format, the user may type a open-text answer, or select a suggested popular answer, as described previously. When the user has made their entry, the system determines if the answer was typed as open-text or selected from the list of possible answers. If the answer is selected from a list of suggested answers, the users choice is saved in a database using the existing Answer ID for that existing answer in the system. If the answer was free/open-text, an algorithm is invoked to determine if the answer already exists in the database in a similar form to the users free-text entry. Using search technology, possible existing alternatives from the database are suggested that possess similar characteristics as the free-text answer, as shown in
An administrator, or automated program, can also verify that any new answers are qualified values, such as not containing swear-words or other anomalies. An automated program may exist which uses a dictionary, or other software that can verify the validity of the value. If instead of a new open-text answer, the user selects one of the alternative responses, the selected answer is saved in the database using the existing Answer ID for that answer. Occasionally, the FieldGroup presented to the user is not of an open format, such as a small list of possible responses that do not change (are not open), or a numeric value, such as a salary figure, or a date, or Boolean values such as Yes/No, as further shown in
Reference is now made to
Reference is now made to
When a profile search is requested, the search goal definition document for the search is retrieved. It specifies rules for how profile attributes are to be matched and compared. The user's profile is then compared to all other profiles in the system, and each matching value from the profiles is assigned a score determined by the field in which it matches. For instance, exact matches on the FieldGroup “job” are assigned a certain relatively high score. An affinity match, i.e., “All People with Accounting Jobs,” is also considered because these matches are similar but not exactly the same. Because of this, these matches are given a slightly lower score. Each profile is then scored based on all of its affinity and value matches, and the score is totaled up, by summing up the individual scores. One skilled in the art can understand that many different types of search goals and match criteria can be defined, depending on the type of FieldGroup. The FieldGroup for “Job” is just one kind. For example, other match scores can be defined for Skills, Specialties, and Certifications, and combined with scores for Job, to create very accurate rankings of profiles returned in the search to meet a given search goal. To be returned for a search (qualify), a profile must meet a certain overall threshold score, which is predefined by an administrator as part of the search goal document. Additionally, the profile must contain matches on specific deterministic fields. The threshold score removes any profiles that do not match on enough attributes to be considered a high quality match. For instance, it is possible that a profile matches on many non-deterministic values, such as gender, geographic location, or experience level, but does not match on something that is critical (or deterministic), such as job type or specialty. An accountant may live next to an attorney, in the same age range, in the same community, who went to the same college, but they should not be considered matches because they are in different jobs and different job affinities. Therefore, in one type of search goal, only certain fields and affinities, such as those related to the job or specialty, are considered deterministic enough to be considered for matches. Again, one skilled in the art will understand that while Job and Skill are considered highly deterministic for basic compensation analysis, the system could be employed for other types of analysis where possibly other FieldGroups such as Location or Gender, might be specified as highly deterministic instead. This allows for the definition and automation of many kinds of reports meeting many different profile search goals.
Additionally, some combinations of attribute matches may be considered more valuable than other combinations. For instance, it may be preferable to match a smaller subset of profiles for which a location is closer to the target profile. By employing matchgroups within the profile search goal document, sets of matches can also be ranked. This is useful for instance in ranking profiles higher where geographic proximity is desirable. By creating a set of affinities, described elsewhere, that group together profiles by regions, the profile search system using matchgroups is able to target profiles within local regions first, ranking them higher than profiles that meet other match criteria but are in outlying regions. For instance, the search goal may wish first to find only profiles in the same or surrounding cities. By defining metropolitan region affinity groups, people in the same metropolitan region are found. However, there may not be enough valid data in the system to find profiles in the same metropolitan region, and therefore, it is also necessary to consider profiles from a larger surrounding region, such as a state, or multi-state area, and choose them if necessary. By including affinities in a ranked fashion in matchgroups, it is possible to return profiles that are closest to a user's by having them rank the highest. One skilled in the art would recognize that closeness could apply to any attribute of a profile in addition to location, such as experience level or age ranges.
Reference is now made to
An administrator defines an aggregate definition, as shown in
Because hundreds of aggregate definitions are available over thousands of affinity groups, it is impossible to present all of this data to a human in a format which they could easily and quickly understand. The resulting data would consume thousands of pages. To solve this problem, the invention groups aggregations into charts and groups, and filters and arranges the charts in a layout which is understandable and useful to a human. Only charts that have enough data, and that are determined to be applicable to the user's profile, are shown to the user. This allows for many reports that are only applicable to certain groups to be shown at any time, without having to predefine a report for any particular group. For instance, a group named “Pay Influencers” might contain the following charts: “Average Salary by Job,” “Average Salary By Practice Area,” “Average Salary By Teaching Rank,” “Average Salary By Skill,” “Average Salary By Experience,” “Average Billing Rate by Bar Association,” etc. But not all of the charts in this group are displayed, depending on the applicability to the user's profile. For example, the chart “Average Salary By Teaching Rank” is not displayed if the report is for a lawyer's profile. Another group named “Geographic Outlook” might contain charts such as “Average Salary By City,” and “Average Salary By State.”
Charts are grouped into logical sections, as shown in
For instance, a lawyer's profile may have matched to many other attorneys, all who have answered a FieldGroup for Bar Association and a FieldGroup for Hourly Billing Rate. The compiled report for the lawyer can automatically show a chart for “Average Billing Rate by Bar Association,” whereas a report for a High School Teachers would not show this chart because no matching profiles have either answered the “Bar Association” FieldGroup or the “Hourly Billing Rate” FieldGroup. This is an important innovation over previous inventions, which are restricted to returning generic assessments that group individuals into large, often useless, categorizations while ignoring subtler, yet far more useful categorizations.
Different embodiments of Report Aggregation and Display exist in the system. “The PayScale Report,” as shown in
Reference is now made to
The rules engine is implemented using a set of database queries, as shown in
Claims
1. A computer implemented method for a survey that surveys a plurality of responders to the server with a sequence of questions that is automatically tailored per responder to enable the creation of an individualized report for each responder, comprising the steps of:
- creating, with a computer implemented survey engine, for each of said responders responsive of answers provided by each of said responders to a tailored sequence of questions a corresponding profile containing said tailored sequence of questions and corresponding answers, said tailored sequence of questions directed towards collection of responder related information;
- creating, with said computer implemented survey engine, at least periodically, one or more affinity groups for said plurality of responders responsive of each of said corresponding profiles, each of said one or more affinity groups having at least one profile in an affinity group, said one or more affinity groups being created independent of the order of presenting questions to each of said responders in said tailored sequence of questions;
- associating, with said computer implemented survey engine, each profile with at least one affinity group;
- presenting to each responder, with said computer implemented survey engine, a sequence of questions from a source containing a plurality of different questions, said sequence of questions and order of each question in said sequence of questions being independently, asynchronously, and dynamically tailored for each and every responder on an individual basis responsive to both an answer received from each individual responder to a question previously presented to said individual responder and a particular affinity group or combination of affinity groups to which a profile of said individual responder is associated;
- storing each of said profiles in a storage associated with said computer implemented survey engine;
- the steps repeated at least once more per responder;
- generating a report for a responder relative to said tailored sequence of questions responsive of a request from said responder to generate said report responsive of at least said profile attributes; and
- creating, by the computer implemented survey engine, when applicable, new affinity groups as additional responders respond to respective tailored sequences of questions.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein an affinity group is pre-stored in said storage.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one particular subsequent question from said sequence of questions is presented because of at least one of:
- popularity of said subsequent questions within said particular affinity group or combination of said affinity groups;
- as a most frequently answered subsequent question within said particular affinity group or combination of said affinity groups; and
- as a most recently answered subsequent question within said particular affinity group or combination of said affinity groups.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein said corresponding answers to a question from said sequence of questions are presented because of at least one of:
- popularity of an answer within a particular affinity group or combination of affinity groups;
- as a most frequent answer within a particular affinity group or combination of affinity groups; and
- as a most recent answer within a particular affinity group or combination of affinity groups.
5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:
- filtering each of said profiles, with a collaborative filtering engine of said computer implemented survey engine, wherein said filtering further comprises the application of a rules engine that compares each of said profiles to a set of predefined criteria;
- determining, with said collaborative filtering engine of said computer implemented survey engine, when no additional questions are to be presented to said individual responder based upon said individual's response to a corresponding said tailored sequence of questions; and
- capturing, with said collaborative filtering engine of said computer implemented survey engine, profile attributes comprising targeted variables with regard to said individual responder's profile responsive to an individual's answers to said sequence of questions.
6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:
- determining validity of each of said profiles; and
- tagging a user profile as inactive if determined to be invalid.
7. The method of claim 5, wherein said filtering step further comprises the step of:
- modifying, with a collaborative filtering engine of said computer implemented survey engine, an answer to said question based on at least one of: predetermined criterion; at least one filtering rule; consistency with previously answered questions; consistency with all answered questions; and, consistency with answers of said particular affinity group or combination of said affinity groups.
8. The method of claim 1, wherein said generating of a report is constrained by one or more constraints comprising at least one of: one or more attributes of said user profile; and, a reporting goal.
9. The method of claim 8, wherein said goal comprises at least one of: a profile attribute value; a range of profile attribute values; a Boolean value reflective of a set of values; a Boolean value reflective of a set of non-values; a date range; a minimum count of matching profiles; a maximum count of matching profiles; a question filter; an affinity filter; and, a match score threshold.
10. The method of claim 8, said step of providing said report comprising the steps of:
- matching between at least a matchfield of said goal and a corresponding matchfield of at least one of an affinity group and a user profile, and
- generating a match score.
11. The method of claim 10, further comprising the step of:
- determining at least one best match from a plurality of possible matches.
12. The method of claim 8, wherein said goal is any of: a personal goal, wherein said personal goal is a result of a plurality of user inputs pertaining to personal aspirations; and, an external goal, wherein said external goal is a result of a plurality of arbitrary inputs.
13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:
- creating, with a computer implemented survey engine, a goal profile created responsive of answers provided to a tailored sequence of questions for said foal profile, said goal profile containing said tailored sequence of questions for said goal profile and corresponding answers, said tailored sequence of questions for said goal file directed towards collection of information related to said goal;
- storing said goal profile in a storage associated with said computer implemented survey engine;
- comparing said goal profile to the plurality of said profiles that are stored in said storage for the purpose of determining similarities between one or more of said plurality of profiles to said goal profile; and
- determining which of said plurality of profiles is similar to said goal profile;
- wherein said report is generated responsive of said goal profile.
14. A method for determining a match between a profile and a plurality of profiles being associated to one or more affinity groups comprising:
- creating, with a computer implemented survey engine, a goal profile created responsive of answers provided to a tailored sequence of questions, said goal profile containing said tailored sequence of questions and corresponding answers, said tailored sequence of questions directed towards collection of responder related information;
- storing said goal profile in a storage associated with said computer implemented survey engine;
- comparing said goal profile to the plurality of profiles that are stored in said storage for the purpose of determining similarities between one or more of the plurality of profiles to said goal profile;
- determining which of the plurality of profiles is similar to said goal profile; and
- generating a report responsive of said goal profile.
15. The method of claim 14, wherein said report includes a list of profiles from the plurality of profiles that were determined to be similar to said profile goal.
16. The method of claim 14, wherein determination of similarity of a profile from the plurality of profiles to said goal profile comprises:
- determining a score of similarity for at least an attribute of said profile from the plurality of profiles to a corresponding attribute of said goal profile or one or more of the affinity groups of said profile from the plurality of profiles.
17. The method of claim 16, further comprising:
- aggregating scores of each of said score of similarity for each attribute and affinity group of said profile from the plurality of profiles to a corresponding attribute of said goal profile into a similarity score between said profile of the plurality of profiles and said goal profile.
18. The method of claim 17, wherein said aggregation is a weighted aggregation, such that each said score of similarity may have a different weight in said weighted aggregation.
19. The method of claim 18, wherein a plurality of different scoring mechanism are used to determine similarity of different types of attributes.
20. The method of claim 14, wherein said goal profile is one of the plurality of profiles.
21. The method of claim 14, wherein said tailored sequence of questions is enabled to accept answers to a subset of said tailored sequence of questions for the purpose of creating said goal profile.
22. The method of claim 21, wherein said answers provided with respect of each question of said tailored sequence of questions further comprise an indication for: an answer to a profile from the plurality of profiles may have a variability from a corresponding answer to a question from said tailored sequence of questions; or, an answer to a profile from the plurality of profiles must be similar to a corresponding answer to a question from said tailored sequence of questions.
23. The method of claim 14, wherein the one or more affinity groups are generated by:
- creating, with said computer implemented survey engine, for each of a plurality of responders responsive of answers provided by each of said responders to a responder tailored sequence of questions a corresponding profile containing said responder tailored sequence of questions and corresponding answers, said responder tailored sequence of questions directed towards collection of responder related information;
- creating, with said computer implemented survey engine, at least periodically, one or more affinity groups for said plurality of responders responsive of each of said corresponding profiles, each of said one or more affinity groups having at least one profile in an affinity group, said one or more affinity groups being created independent of the order of presenting questions to each of said responders in said responder tailored sequence of questions;
- associating, with said computer implemented survey engine, each profile with at least one affinity group;
- presenting to each responder, with said computer implemented survey engine, a responder sequence of questions from a source containing a plurality of different questions, said sequence of questions and order of each question in said sequence of questions being independently, asynchronously, and dynamically tailored for each and every responder on an individual basis responsive to both an answer received from each individual responder to a question previously presented to said individual responder and a particular affinity group or combination of affinity groups to which a profile of said individual responder is associated;
- storing each of said profiles in said storage;
- the steps repeated at least once more per responder of said plurality of responders;
- creating, by the computer implemented survey engine, when applicable, new affinity groups as additional responders respond to respective responder tailored sequences of questions.
24. The method of claim 23, further comprising:
- filtering each of said profiles, with a collaborative filtering engine of said computer implemented survey engine, wherein said filtering further comprises the application of a rules engine that compares each of said profiles to a set of predefined criteria;
- determining, with said collaborative filtering engine of said computer implemented survey engine, when no additional questions are to be presented to said individual responder based upon said individual's response to a corresponding said tailored sequence of questions; and
- capturing, with said collaborative filtering engine of said computer implemented survey engine, profile attributes comprising targeted variables with regard to said individual responder's profile responsive to an individual's answers to said sequence of questions.
Type: Application
Filed: Jul 2, 2009
Publication Date: Oct 22, 2009
Inventors: Douglas Tarr (New York, NY), Joseph Giordano, III (Bellevue, WA)
Application Number: 12/496,916
International Classification: G06Q 10/00 (20060101); G06F 17/30 (20060101);