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Why is Harvard undertaking a faculty climate survey?
Why should I participate in the survey?
Who is eligible to take the survey?
How was the survey instrument created?
Have any Harvard faculty members reviewed the survey instrument?
Was this study approved by the Institutional Review Board?
How long will the survey take to complete?
Do I have to complete the survey in one sitting?
Do I have to answer every question on the survey?
Who is administering the survey?
Why is Harvard not administering the survey?
Why must I use my unique url to access the survey?
Can I share my url with a fellow faculty member?
What do I do if I don't know my unique url?
What safeguards protect the security of my survey responses?
Will my survey response data be kept by MIT indefinitely?
Who at Harvard will see my survey data?
Will Harvard share my survey response data with peer institutions?
Can I take a paper version of the survey rather than the web-based version?
What should I do if I have additional questions about the survey?
Why is Harvard undertaking a faculty climate survey? (top)
The Harvard University Faculty Climate Survey is a study designed to provide a broad understanding of faculty experiences. The survey will examine the quality of the faculty's worklife and working climate here at Harvard University with the aim of developing initiatives at the School and University level to address any concerns.
Why should I participate in the survey? (top)
Participating in the survey is an excellent opportunity to provide feedback to the University on what it is doing well and where it needs to make improvements. Your responses will inform the University's policies and practices going forward.
A high response rate, moreover, is critical to the success of the survey for two reasons. First, in order to draw valid conclusions from the survey results, the survey respondents must be representative of the general population – a high response rate will ensure that this is the case. Second, since results will not be reported for groups smaller than five individuals, a high response rate is necessary to ensure that meaningful analyses can be shared with faculty and administrators.
Who is eligible to take the survey? (top)
All current faculty members (excluding hospital-based faculty) who have been faculty members at Harvard since September 1, 2005 are eligible to take the survey.
How was the survey instrument created? (top)
The survey instrument is the result of a collaborative effort between the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity and two faculty advisory committees: the Advisory Group for Metrics and Analysis and the University Committee on Faculty Development and Diversity. The survey includes questions tailored to our specific environment at Harvard, as well as questions written in collaboration with our peer institutions (e.g., MIT, Stanford, and Yale).
Have any Harvard faculty members reviewed the survey instrument? (top)
Yes, multiple drafts of the survey instrument have been reviewed and revised by the following groups:
Was this study approved by the Institutional Review Board? (top)
Yes, this project has been reviewed and approved by the Committee on the Use of Human Subjects.
How long will the survey take to complete? (top)
The survey will take roughly 30 minutes to complete.
Do I have to complete the survey in one sitting? (top)
No, you can stop the survey and return to it at a later time (as many times as you wish), while the University is conducting the survey. Your prior responses will be saved, so that you will be able to review your previous responses and complete any questions you did not answer. You will also be able to change your responses to questions you have already answered.
Do I have to answer every question on the survey? (top)
No, you can skip any question that you do not wish to answer.
Who is administering the survey? (top)
The survey is being administered by the MIT Web Survey Service, which is part of MIT's Information Services & Technology. The service is run by Jagruti S. Patel, Senior IT Consultant, and Jeffrey I. Schiller, Network Manager. Both are trained in Research Involving Human Subjects, and have run confidential surveys for MIT and other higher educational institutions. For more information about MIT's Web Survey Service, please contact surveys@mit.edu.
The MIT Web Survey Service has run surveys for a large number of institutions, including all of our Ivy League peers, Duke, and Stanford. The MIT Web Survey Service also administers all of the surveys for the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, of which Harvard is a member.
Why is Harvard not administering the survey? (top)
To ensure that the responses are confidential and that no one at Harvard can associate a person's name with their responses, the Office of the Provost chose to have a third-party administer the survey. No individuals at Harvard University will handle the raw survey response data with individual identifiers attached.
The MIT Web Survey Service has run surveys for a large number of institutions, including all of our Ivy League peers, Duke, and Stanford. The MIT Web Survey Service also administers all of the surveys for the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, of which Harvard is a member.
Why must I use my unique url to access the survey? (top)
Your unique url provides an additional measure of security for the survey. It enables MIT to ensure that no unauthorized individual fills out the survey, and that no individual is able to fill out the survey multiple times.
Can I share my url with a fellow faculty member? (top)
No, you should not share your unique url with anyone. Each faculty member must use his or her own url to enter the survey.
What do I do if I don't know my unique url? (top)
If you have misplaced your unique url, please visit: https://websurvey.mit.edu/faculty/harvard
What safeguards protect the security of my survey responses? (top)
Faculty survey responses are submitted over a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection, establishing a secure connection between the respondent's browser and the web server at MIT. The server is stored in a secure data facility on MIT's campus and is monitored 24 hours-per-day and 7 days-per-week by network operations personnel. All of the survey data collected, including backups, are protected against unauthorized access.
Once the survey is completed, the survey data stripped of personal identifiers will be transmitted to Harvard. The survey data will be transferred to Harvard as an encrypted file. At Harvard, the data will reside on a secure Harvard University server. Access to this data will be limited to a small number of Institutional Research employees and network operations personnel.
Will my survey response data be kept by MIT indefinitely? (top)
No, the Web Survey Service at MIT will destroy all participant information and survey data collected at MIT for this survey.
Who at Harvard will see my survey data? (top)
No individuals at Harvard University will have access to survey data containing personal identifiers. The Web Survey Service at MIT, which is administering the survey, will strip all personal identifiers from the data before transmitting the data to Harvard.
Only the Institutional Research Office at Harvard University will have access to the record-level data (without personal identifiers) from this survey. Only aggregate data will be shared with University and School administrators and faculty. In particular, only responses from groups with at least five faculty members will be reported.
Will Harvard share my survey response data with peer institutions? (top)
In the future, Harvard University may choose to share the anonymous record-level faculty survey data with peer institutions. This data sharing would either occur through agreements with individual institutions or through the Association of American Universities Data Exchange (AAUDE). In either case, any faculty survey data that is shared would not contain personal identifiers, and only institutional researchers at peer institutions would have access to the record-level data.
Furthermore, AAUDE has very strict rules regarding data confidentiality. In particular, institutions must include at least five peer Schools in their analysis and the names of these peer Schools must be masked. Only aggregate data can be reported (i.e. only responses from groups with at least five faculty members can be shared).
Can I take a paper version of the survey rather than the web-based version? (top)
We strongly encourage all faculty to take the web-based version of the survey. However, if you would like a paper version of the survey, please contact fad-oir@harvard.edu.
What should I do if I have additional questions about the survey? (top)
Please contact fad-oir@harvard.edu with any questions about the survey.