Investigator's can now log on and simply click the criteria matching the information in their reports and perform pre-evaluations of the information they have collected. With this tool, reports can be examined for completeness and investigators will know whether their reports have all essential questions asked and answered prior to submission while at the same time putting percentage values on the reports to indicate their "strength". It must be emphasized that this is not a "grade" of how well an investigator researched an event but rather an evaluation of the information collected.

   This project was the result of two particular circumstances.

   1. I'm studying to be a Field Investigator and
   2. I'm trying to learn Javascript.

   While studying the Field Investigators Manual I came to the Ballester-Guasp method for performing numerical evaluations of Field Investigator's reports. I thought it would be a good project for me to write some simple javascript that would perform the evaluation on the fly.

   A Ballester-Guasp evaluation takes various aspects of a report such as Information Quality, Strangeness and Witness Reliability and weighs them according to a mathematical modal. For instance a 1-hour personal interview with a witness is better than a 15-minute telephone conversation., therefore the 1-hour interview will carry more weight.

THE CALCULATOR:

     The math is very simple so I didn't have to worry about complicated calculations. With a little trial and error I got my code to work successfully on my browser (IE 6.0) but it wasn't functioning in other kinds of browsers. With some help from some beta testers, I finally determined that some browsers wouldn't recognize a particular script function so I went back and rewrote some of the math code that allowed me to remove the errant function completely.

     My code has now tested successfully in:

     ~ Internet Explorer 4.0 or better
     ~ Netscape
     ~ Opera 5.0 and 6.0
     and
     ~ AOL Browser

     If this code doesn't work in your browser please contact me at ufo@terrygroff.com.

     I hope you find this tool useful. I welcome any comments, questions and criticisms. If this is successful, my next project will be a script to estimate the size of an object based on its apparent size and distance. Other tools could include instant cross-referencing of reports via WUFOD (Worldwide UFO Database).

     The calculator can be found online here. In addition the calculator can be downloaded from this same site for use on your computer without going online.

       I want to thank Tom Deuley for his invaluable help in testing the script. I also want to thank Steve Hudgeons, Senior Field Investigator - DFW MUFON, for his encouragement.