Professional Environment Survey FAQ

This information provides context for the 2019 CEAS Professional Environment Survey. For technical questions about the survey, please contact Fran Costa frances.costa@colorado.edu. For questions about the survey content and goals, please contact Beth Myers (beth.myers@colorado.edu).

The goal of this survey is to follow up on the findings of the 2017 CEAS Climate Survey, which identified three areas of opportunity for making improvements in the workplace culture: decision-making processes, building trust, and fairness in advancement and promotion. This follow-up survey is asking CEAS staff and faculty for their insights on how to address these issues. We are implementing this survey with the help of CU Institutional Research, a unit in the Office of Data Analytics.
    CU Institutional Research (IR) works with units across campus to deliver actionable data. They are responsible for safeguarding all CU employee and student records and following best practices in survey and data security standards. The survey will be entirely administered and analyzed by IR. Only aggregated, anonymous data will be provided to CEAS.
      A survey link will be sent to your CU email address. The link will take you to the online survey in Qualtrics, a state-of-the-art survey platform used by Institutional Research (IR). After the survey is closed, the link to you will be broken and the non-linked data will be analyzed by IR staff. Please contact Robert Stubbs (IR) robert.stubbs@colorado.edu for more information about IR’s processes and procedures.

        We know that individuals must be confident that their responses are anonymous, confidential, and secure if CEAS is to receive candid feedback. CU Institutional Research (IR) uses many strategies to ensure anonymity. As described above, your email address is used only to send the survey link and to send reminder emails. Upon completion, the link to your email address is automatically broken.

        Your responses to this survey will remain completely anonymous. Staff in CEAS will not be able to access the data while it is being collected or after the survey closes. Your name and email address will not be linked to any of the responses reported from the results of the survey. Personally identifiable data are handled solely by two IR staff (the Director, Rob Stubbs and Fran Costa, Senior Researcher), who are responsible for drawing the survey population from the employee database file and administering the survey to all CEAS employees. When data collection has been completed, the identifying information (e.g., emails, survey links) that permitted the database manager to send survey reminders will be removed from the final data file. In other words, the information in the final data file will be anonymous.

        The final de-identified data file will be analyzed by a third IR staff member (Sarah Banchefsky, Survey Design and Assessment Analyst). The data analyses will focus on the overall CEAS results, as well as results for employee groups (i.e., demographic categories--by gender, for example). The analyses will not “drill down” to look at differences between demographic categories if there are fewer than 12 survey participants in any particular category alone, or when crossing two or more categories (e.g., race/ethnicity categories broken out by gender). Groups of individuals with fewer than 12 members will either be aggregated into a larger group or not reported to CEAS at all. IR will not provide any findings that would risk making someone identifiable due to the uniqueness of their demographic characteristics, department, job category, or a combination of those factors. Your anonymity is our first duty of care and will be protected in all reports resulting from this survey. Everyone involved is committed to ensuring that individuals can provide candid feedback with confidence. Anything else is counter-productive to the effort.

          The CU Institutional Research unit currently safeguards sensitive employment and academic data across campus and uses state-of-the-art data security protocols. The survey platform, Qualtrics, meets VSAQ data standards. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
            Survey results will be used to identify opportunities for improvement in the areas of decision making, building trust, and advancement and promotion. The results will further inform the action plan being implemented by the college.
              The survey will launch on March 14 and will close on March 25.
                The survey will take about 3-7 minutes. Those who have more to share may take a little longer.
                  There are a few questions that ask participants to rate our current workplace culture. There are also five open-ended questions that ask participants for ideas on how to address problems that were identified by the 2017 CEAS Climate Survey.
                    Recent staff/faculty workplace culture surveys conducted on campus have achieved response rates in the 60-90% range. We hope to do as well or better! A robust response is needed in order to make the most of the survey findings.
                      After the survey closes, IR will analyze and report on the aggregated data in April. CEAS leadership will share results with the college before the end of the semester. An action plan grounded in the findings of the survey will be developed and communicated to inform new programming and actions.
                        Qualtrics, the survey software, does provide a mobile platform. However, it is more difficult to review and complete the survey on a smartphone.