Act by this Friday, Nov. 16, to include your voice in the UCOP Climate Survey
November 13, 2012 •
If you haven’t yet taken the UCOP Climate Survey, be sure to complete the questionnaire by this Friday, Nov. 16, in order for your voice to be heard.
All UCOP staff received a personal invitation from Executive Vice President Nathan Brostrom to take the survey, designed to help improve the work environment for everyone at UC Office of the President. It is part of the systemwide effort that will survey all 185,000 faculty and staff and all 235,000 students at 13 UC locations.
Already, more than 40 percent of UCOP employees have responded. But after hearing some staff express concerns about confidentiality of survey data, the UCOP climate study work team is reassuring staff and urging them to respond honestly to as many questions as they comfortably can.
“Since people will be discussing personal and sensitive topics, confidentiality is critical to the survey success. If people don’t feel they can be honest in their responses, it impacts the quality of the data we receive,” said Jan Corlett, chief of staff for Agriculture and Natural Resources and co-chair of the systemwide Campus Climate Survey work team.
“We are taking every possible precaution to ensure that data remain confidential and that the privacy of respondents is maintained,” Corlett added, referring to the fact that IP addresses will be stripped when the survey is submitted. Other measures include stripping personally identifiable information from any reports based on the data, grouping individual data for reporting purposes, and redacting identifiable information from qualitative responses.
In addition, the survey is being administered by an outside consultant, Susan Rankin, an associate professor of education at Pennsylvania State University and principal of Rankin & Associates Consulting. This follows best practices in administering campus climate studies to assure that findings are unbiased and independent from the university.
For more on measures being taken to enhance the confidentiality of survey responses, see the Frequently Asked Questions on the Campus Climate Study website.
The UCOP survey is tailored specifically to OP’s workplace environment. It includes questions about institutional climate, inclusion and work-life balance and allows you to describe your personal work experiences at UCOP. It should take only about 20 to 45 minutes of your time. Paper surveys are also available upon request from Jesse Bernal at jesse.bernal@ucop.edu.
Believed to be the largest study of institutional climate ever conducted, it will cover all 10 campuses, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and UC Office of the President through February 2013. The effort is funded entirely by the UC President’s Initiative Fund, an endowment for special projects, and no tuition or taxpayer dollars are being used. Final data will be available in spring 2013.
To encourage participation, survey takers who answer at least half the questions will be entered automatically into a random drawing for prizes. UCOP will give away five $2,000 professional development grants and two iPads to survey participants.
Find more details on the Campus Climate Study website.
