home Standard Operating Procedures: College Leadership Survey Administration

Standard Operating Procedures: College Leadership Survey Administration

1. University Planning and Analysis (UPA) will prepare all necessary programs to administer the online survey. 
2. After a respondent logs into the survey via the university’s authentication process a randomly generated ID will be retained on the respondent’s survey record.  No personally identifying information (e.g., employee ID, Unity ID, name) will be included at any time on the participant’s individual record with his/her responses.  The random IDs will allow UPA to control access to the survey and to assist with sending reminder notices to non-respondents.  UPA will destroy crosswalk files linking random IDs to information about specific individuals (e.g., name, Unity ID) immediately after the online survey closes.
3. The Provost may request that demographic information about survey participants (e.g., department/unit, academic rank, tenure status) be included on individuals’ survey records.  The inclusion of such demographic information, however, must be limited to avoid the possibility of identifying any specific individual by combining various demographic pieces of information about him/her. 
4. UPA is responsible for maintaining the security of the survey data and all associated files.  All data and associated files will be stored on a secure, password protected computer. 
5. Eligible faculty and staff population members must be identified in HR records as being in a ‘home’ department or paid from a department within the college.  The faculty population will include all instructional faculty, regardless of rank, and the staff population will include all non-instructional EPA and SPA employees.  Excluded from the survey population are those who are classified as retired or emeritus, ‘no-pay,’ post-docs, graduate or undergraduate students, and temporary employees with less than 0.75 FTE.
   
   UPA will identify eligible faculty and staff population members from current HR personnel files.  They will compare the faculty population to the Official Roster of the Voting Faculty for the college maintained by the Faculty Senate Office, and identify any differences.  The College Leadership Survey Committee (CLSC) will be responsible for resolving any inconsistencies and finalizing the population(s).
   
   If desired, the CLSC is responsible for identifying population members for the external constituents file.  The Provost and the Dean may also contribute names to include in the population.  UPA must be provided with the names and contact information (mail and email) for all external constituents.
6. UPA is responsible for sending all notices about the survey.  Specifically,
   • “Pre-notification” email: One week before the Dean’s presentation to the college UPA will sent a email message, over the name of the Provost, to all faculty and staff in the survey population reminding them about the presentation and the upcoming survey(s). 
   • Survey invitation: Immediately after the Dean’s presentation UPA will send an email, over the name of the CLSC, to all members of the survey population (faculty, staff, administrators, and external constituents) inviting them to participate in the survey.  UPA will also send a hardcopy letter, on Provost letterhead, to all external constituents informing them about the survey and providing them the necessary information to access the survey. 
   • Follow-up reminders: UPA will send email reminders to all non-respondents approximately one week after the survey goes live, and another about five days after that (or about two days before the survey closes after a total of 15 days in the field).  All reminder emails will be sent over the name of UPA to reassure members of the population that no one outside of UPA knows who has and has not participated in the survey.
7. UPA is responsible for all data analysis and preparing a report for the CLSC and the Provost.  UPA will hand deliver a hardcopy report to the CLSC approximately two weeks after the online survey closes.  The report will consist of aggregate level results (means and frequencies) for all closed-ended questions for each separate survey.  The Faculty Survey report will include breakouts for tenured/tenure track faculty and for non-tenure track faculty.  The Staff Survey will include breakouts for EPA and for SPA employees.  Direct reports will be included within their appropriate category, unless there is a large enough group to permit reporting their results as a separate category.
   
   The reports to the Provost and the CLSC will also include the verbatim responses to the open-end comments for each separate survey.  Similar to the above, comments will be identified by whether the faculty respondent was tenured/tenure track or non-tenure track, or whether the staff respondent was EPA or SPA. If UPA personnel note that responses to open-ended questions include self-identifying references or references to people other than the Dean which it might be inappropriate to share with the CLSC, the UPA staff member will Inform the chair of the CLSC, who will review the references and decide on whether to edit the responses to remove identifying references.
   
   When handing over the report UPA will provide the CLSC will a complete explanation of the contents of the report, along with suggested methods for reviewing and interpreting the data, and a reminder about the confidential nature of the data.
   
   CLSC may prepare an additional report and/or comments on the survey for the Provost.  Any such reports are due to the Provost approximately 4 weeks after the CLSC receives the report from UPA.