Faculty Job Satisfaction: The COACHE Survey
The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) developed and administers a faculty job satisfaction survey, completed by faculty and a network of 250+ colleges and universities. During the spring 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2022 semesters, we solicited Purdue faculty input through this survey. Tenure-track, clinical/professional-track, and research-track faculty and lecturers/senior lecturers were invited to participate via a link from the Graduate College of Education at Harvard University. The goal of the survey is to identify both our areas of strength and of concern, and to guide our actions for improvement. The survey responses are clustered by COACHE to give us insight into how we’re doing in the following areas:
- Nature of Work: Overall, Teaching, Research, and Service
- Resources & Support
- Benefits
- Interdisciplinary Work and Collaboration
- Mentoring
- Promotion, Tenure, Retention, and Negotiation
- Leadership and Governance
- Departmental Engagement, Quality, and Collegiality
- Work & Personal Life Balance
- Appreciation & Recognition
- Global Satisfaction and Improvement
COACHE Reports
COACHE provides participating institutions with benchmarks to compare themselves to peer institutions and a high-level report of the results. These reports are available for years 2012, 2015, and 2018.
Purdue Results and Dashboards
COACHE provided Purdue with de-identified datasets from 2015 and 2018, and will do so again in 2022. These datasets enable us to look deeper into benchmarks and survey items, based on academic or demographic variables. Due to our agreement with COACHE and confidentiality for faculty, only IDA+A staff may access the survey datasets of de-identified individual responses and all reporting must be aggregate (10 responses or more) and non-identifiable. IDA+A has analyzed these datasets and prepared dashboards containing the aggregate results. These dashboards can be accessed here:
- All faculty may access the IDA+A dashboards containing results for the university and results for the college where they are primarily appointed.
- Deans and department heads may access the IDA+A dashboards that provide comparisons within Purdue University for institutional, college, and departmental results.
Use of Results in Colleges
In 2022, each college appointed members to the Purdue COACHE Implementation Team who are working with IDA+A to evaluate the results for their college. They will then plan and implement actions in their college, guided by the results, intended to highlight areas of strength and address areas of concern where improvement is possible. Faculty are encouraged to reach out to their COACHE Committee Membership Representative to learn more about how the results are being used.
Faculty groups are also invited to collaborate with the Office of the Provost and IDA+A to carry out deeper analyses and formulate additional ways of reporting the results. To get started, please see our:
COACHE Research
For more information about the use of COACHE survey data in publications or reports, see: