Campuswide calendar to help with survey administration

A calendar of current and upcoming surveys, available to all members of the West Lafayette campus community, has been posted to help with the coordination of planning and scheduling surveys asking for or seeking participation from West Lafayette faculty, staff and student populations.

The Surveys at Purdue calendar, reachable with career account name and password, was developed and is hosted by Institutional Data Analytics + Assessment (IDA+A), a part of the Office of the Provost. The calendar was vetted by Purdue’s Survey Oversight Committee, which was formed under a mandate from Jay Akridge, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity, so that surveying practices can be improved across the West Lafayette campus. A basic step in that effort is visibility.

The calendar shows all large surveys, whether academic and administrative in nature. Those anticipating conducting a survey should both consult the calendar before finalizing plans and submit information about their survey so that it can appear in the calendar. However, the purpose is not to restrict surveying, rather to coordinate scheduling and reduce repetition.

Sarah Sasse Steele, strategy and planning lead in Human Resources, says, “Knowing how often we are surveying these groups and why we are surveying them will … allow us to be more thoughtful in our planning efforts.”

Details provided by the calendar include the topic, the target population, the number of subjects being contacted (i.e., sample), the principal investigator, and how to contact the PI.

IDA+A stresses that the survey calendar won’t restrict surveys needed for academic or administrative purposes. The survey calendar addresses concerns that surveying on Purdue’s campus is excessive and uncoordinated.

“We’re getting in each other’s way sometimes,” said Dan Carpenter, executive director of Student Success Programs and a member of the Survey Oversight Committee. “With this calendar we will be able to do our surveys in a much more informed way.”

The calendar will, therefore, work to space surveys effectively across time, topic and possible participants (students, faculty, staff, etc.).

Kevin Maurer, director of strategic initiatives and assessment in the Division of Student Life, says, “A holistic survey calendar will allow everyone on campus who values student feedback and opinion to ensure they should have a clear path to gathering the needed information in their assessment. If I need to reach out to students for their feedback, I won’t be interfering with other important assessments and should have a clear window to gather what I need.”

For more information about this survey calendar, contact Andrew Zehner, assessment and data analyst in IDA+A, at alzehner@purdue.edu.