Surveys

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During the fall 2021 term, all CU Denver employees and students were invited to participate in the Campus and Workplace Culture survey. The survey asked respondents a range of questions around their sense of belonging and value within the campus community and invited them to speak to specific moments of harm/harassment they may have experienced in their time with CU Denver.

Survey responses were collected during October and November of 2021. Starting in December, the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness (OIRE) began the process of cleaning and organizing the data, so that the data could be analyzed and shared with the campus community. While this process was taking place, the Campus and Workplace Culture Steering Committee, led by Antonio Farias (Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), shifted their focus towards both the immediate reporting needs of the CU Board of Regents and towards longer-term planning for the eventual actions plans that would be based on the results of the survey.

In January, 2022, overall response rates were shared with the Board of Regents digitally. Those response rates then led off a more expansive presentation delivered in-person at the Board of Regents meeting on February 10, 2022. This BOR Presentation focused on the required Regent metrics around incivility and mental health, presented at a very high level. 

February and March were spent cleaning and analyzing the data, and constructing an initial series of dashboards to share data with the campus community. On April 7, 2022, the Board of Regents was presented with a summary of survey results from each surveyed population – faculty, staff, undergraduate students, and graduate students. Following the presentation, the dashboards were published on the OIRE Website.

Late spring and summer 2022 will see continued work to dive further into the details of the results and refinement of the action plans driven by the survey and our strategic initiatives. The Campus and Workplace Culture Steering Committee is committed to allowing for as much data transparency as possible within the data security confines outlined at the surveys launch - particularly that data from response groups of fewer than ten individuals will never be shown and that all results will remain anonymized.

If you have any questions or concerns about this process, please contact the Campus and Workplace Culture Steering Committee at cwcsurvey@ucdenver.edu.

The consultative process with OIRE can include:

• Evaluation of Existing Datasets: Determining if there are data that already exist that may provide you with what you need
• Have similar surveys been administered?
• Modality Determination: Establishing the best method of collecting the information (e.g., online survey, paper survey, focus group). Please reach out to us or the Office of Information Technology for help with Qualtrics, the university's survey software.
• Instrument Design:  Developing items and response categories, ordering items, using white space to improve readability, etc.
• Population Selection and Generation: Determining the most appropriate population(s) to include, sampling, and generating a distribution list with demographic data to embed in your survey.
• Analysis: Analyzing survey results, breaking down information by demographic sub-groups, and creating visualizations of data.

With regard to external surveys, there may be times when university personnel are approached by an external individual, group, or other entity, such as the CU Foundation, for the purpose of soliciting participation in a survey that involves University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus students, faculty, staff, or alumni. University personnel approached by such groups are strongly encouraged to contact OIRE to ensure the external survey does not overlap or otherwise conflict with a university-wide survey.

The Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness supports the data collection and analysis of campus surveys that are administered to all students on the Denver and/or Anschutz Medical Campuses. This includes the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which is available to all freshman and senior-level undergraduates and is administered once every three years. It also includes system-wide University of Colorado surveys as they are released. Results from these surveys are made available on the OIRE website. 

Some surveys may be subject to review and regulation by the Colorado Multiple Institutional Review Board (COMIRB), the university’s institutional review board. COMIRB protects the rights and welfare of human research subjects who participate in surveys and other research activities. Please visit the COMIRB website for more information on what research protocols require COMIRB oversight.  

Some surveys may also require approval from the institutional unit (program, department, college, and/or school) enrolling the student population you seek to survey. For example, in the School of Medicine, requests to survey medical students are vetted through a subcommittee of its Curriculum Steering Committee. You may need to check with the appropriate institutional unit to ensure access to your survey population.