Q: Why are the Regents doing a social climate survey?
A: Promoting diversity in all its forms is one of CU’s guiding principles and core values. The Laws of the Regents, as well as state and federal statutes, prohibit the University of Colorado from unlawful discrimination against its students, faculty, and staff. This commitment must go beyond a written prohibition. We will only know if CU is upholding its obligation to prevent unlawful discrimination by affirmatively reaching out and asking the university community about its experiences. To make CU a better place for everyone, we need to gather information that lets us know where we stand and where we need to direct our attention.
Q: Why did you stop the survey that you sent out earlier this month?
A: Our highest priority is that the survey has a high participation rate and accurate results. Shortly after we published the survey, we heard concerns that it asked for information in a way that might discourage some people from taking it. Because we want everyone in the university community to feel comfortable taking the survey, we suspended it, got feedback from those who raised concerns, and made it better.
Q: Why do you need me to take it again?
A: To address the concerns, we instructed the consultants to destroy the data that we previously collected. We are starting fresh with an improved survey instrument, which means that we must ask you to complete this survey as though the earlier one never existed. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Q: What did you change?
A: We made several changes, including:
- To respond to concerns that members of small departments might not feel comfortable responding at a departmental level, we combined many academic and work units into larger groups.
- We also changed the format of many of the questions to make them more general. For example, instead of asking for a specific birth year, the survey now provides age ranges, such as 26-35 and 46-55.
- We provided a set of definitions to let you know how we were using terms in the survey to ensure that everyone was working from common understandings.
- We provided an advisements page to make sure that you understand how we are collecting information and how the results will be reported to us.
Q: Why are you asking for so much personal information?
A: Our commitment to preventing discrimination protects many different types of people. Race, gender, age, national origin, religion, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, political affiliation, and political philosophy are all protected categories. Consequently, we need to gather data that tells us whether the members of those groups have experienced discrimination. For example, while it may be valuable for us to know that employees on a campus believe there is racial discrimination, it’s far more valuable for us to know that Hispanic employees believe there is racial discrimination.
Q: What if I don’t feel comfortable revealing so much personal information?
A: We hope that you will respond to as many questions as possible. But, if you don’t feel comfortable answering a question that asks for your personal information, every demographic question has an option to “prefer not to answer.”
Q: What will you do to protect my privacy?
A: We are committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected:
- The survey is being conducted anonymously and will not be linked to your e-mail address.
- We are conducting the survey using independent, third-party consultants. The consultants will receive the anonymous surveys and hold all of the data. No University of Colorado employee will have access to individual survey responses.
- We will not request or voluntarily permit the consultants to release the data to any other person.
- We have instructed the consultants not to report data to us at a level that would allow anyone in the University of Colorado to identify a student or employee from the responses.
Q: Was the survey approved by an institutional review board?
A: We submitted the survey to Office of Vice Chancellor for Research for the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus and received a determination that the survey is not subject to IRB approval. Nonetheless, we have worked with the faculty groups and received input to ensure that the survey protects your privacy.
Q: Why doesn’t the survey include open-ended questions?
A: This is our first system-wide effort to gather information about how well the University of Colorado is upholding its commitment to prevent discrimination. With a survey this large, we believed that it was essential that we use this survey to provide quantifiable data.
Q: Why doesn’t the survey ask about other campus and workplace issues?
A: Other issues are important, and we anticipate that the campuses will conduct other surveys to address them. This survey was specifically designed to determine how well how well the University of Colorado is upholding its commitment to prevent discrimination. We want to focus upon this critical issue, respect your time, and keep this survey to a manageable length. We believe you can complete the survey in approximately ten minutes.
Q: Why does the survey ask about political issues?
A: The survey asks for information related to political affiliation and political philosophy because the Laws of the Regents protect students, faculty, and staff from discrimination because of their political beliefs. The University of Colorado is one of a few universities that affirmatively commits to these principles in their policies prohibiting discrimination. To uphold this commitment, we are asking for information that allows us to know where we currently stand.
Q: What will you do with the results?
A: We have two primary goals:
- We want to establish a baseline that tells us how well the University of Colorado is doing in its efforts to promote diversity and prevent discrimination. We intend to conduct this survey on an ongoing basis and track our progress.
- We hope to identify the places where we need to do better. If the survey demonstrates that groups of students or employees believe they are being discriminated against, the campuses will need to devote attention and resources toward remedying that discrimination.
When we receive the results, we will share them broadly within the university community, meet with our students, faculty, and staff to discuss the results, and use our shared governance processes to inform any decisions about how to make CU more welcoming and inclusive.
Q: What should I do if someone retaliates against me for taking the survey?
A: Because no one will know whether you took the survey, no one should be able to retaliate against you for participating. We will not tolerate retaliation against you.
If you believe that someone has retaliated against you, report it immediately to one of these offices.
All Campuses:
University of Colorado Ethics Point: https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/14973/index.html