Random Selection Software & Random Selection Preview©
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Random Selection Software at its Best: Use a Random Selection Preview to Reduce Redundant Testing
RandomWare is a comprehensive suite of software systems for Drug & Alcohol Testing Data Management as well as a complete resource for random selection and random sampling.

The Random Selection Preview provides the opportunity to review a random sample before you commit to a selection.  This random selection utility is completely unbiased: donor names are not displayed.  The preview displays the last selection date for everyone in the list so you can reduce redundant testing.

The Random Selection Preview is a random sort of the personnel roster from which the drug & alcohol testing random sample is generated. The previewed list shows each person's most recent random selection date.

As an example, if you are going to select 5 people and the preview is used as the basis for a random selection, the first five people represented in the previewed list will be those selected.

For consortium management, you'll find a comparable resource for random selection previews. The preview reveals each consortium member company and personnel by ID Card but not by name. Excessive testing of a single consortium member can be greatly reduced or eliminated by the TPA managing the consortium with this resource.

If a random sort represents a reasonable distribution of previously selected personnel, you can generate a random selection of 'n' people from the list (n=1,2,3,4,...) (identically the first 'n' people represented in the preview).
How the Random Selection Software Preview Works
When the dialog box is first displayed, the personnel list is randomly sorted.  The name that corresponds to each record in the random sorted list is not displayed, although the date of their most recent random selection is shown.  
For example, the first ID Card corresponds to the person who was last randomly selected on January 12, 2004.  The second ID Card corresponds to a person has never been randomly selected or was selected on or before a date you can specify. An explanation is outlined below.  The person that corresponds to the third ID Card was last selected April 16, 2004.   

A random selection based on a preview is unbiased since names are not displayed in preview.
 
   
When almost everyone has been randomly selected at one time or another, it's difficult to determine if a random sort represents an outcome that reduces redundancy.

For example, if you're generating a random selection for the second quarter you may want to suppress the display of dates for everyone selected last year.

Enter 12-31-2003 and click the Apply Date Restriction button:
If someone's last selection date is on or before the date specified, their date will display as a blank date: "../../...."

To resort, click the Re-Sort button.

If you know you're going to generate a random selection of 10 people from the list, simply click the Resort option until the first ten items show previous random selection dates that satisfy your requirements.

This resource may not completely eliminate redundant random selections, however, you can use it to help reduce redundancy. 
When you're happy with the outcome of a sort, select a random selection option from the menu at the top of the dialog box.  The random selection control you select will duplicate the random selection exactly as it's displayed here.  The personnel randomly selected will correspond to the personnel represented by the ID cards in the preview.