Survey Information

Any survey or other data collection (e.g., interviews) managed by OIA will clearly identify the group or person conducting the survey and provide contact information (typically name, email address, and telephone number) should respondents have any questions about the content of the survey or about the use/publication of the survey results. This information is typically included in the instructions. An example of this language follows. 
You are asked to complete this survey to evaluate your whole undergraduate experience and your experience in your major(s). If you have any questions or concerns about the survey, please contact the Office of Institutional Analysis at oia@colgate.edu.

Participants can always decide whether or not to participate in the survey, and to decide what information they share when completing a survey. Further, OIA will not require participants to answer any item on the survey. Sample language is below:

“Your participation in this survey is voluntary. You may stop taking it at any time, and you may choose not to answer any question.”

An anonymous survey means that the survey administrators cannot determine who participated in the survey or not. Anonymous surveys typically do not collect identifying information and cannot restrict responses to one response per person. Anonymous surveys are often employed for sensitive subject matters (e.g., sexual assault, substance abuse) because anonymity can yield more honest responses.

A confidential survey contains personally identifiable information, such as name and email address, and demographic variables of interest (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, major, class year) for the analyses.  OIA-administered surveys are typically confidential. Confidential survey responses are reported in the aggregate, and the identity of individual responses is protected through an array of methods, including limiting what can be shared about small populations on our campus. OIA typically performs confidential surveys to allow for analyses of trends in the responses or to connect responses with information from other surveys.

In addition to securing survey data, OIA staff regularly aggregate responses for closed-ended (i.e., check-box) responses and redact individually identifying information shared in open-ended responses to maintain the confidentiality of survey responses. Additional details of both are provided below.

Aggregation is an essential tool for protecting the identity of survey respondents when survey responses are summarized to inform planning and decision-making. When building reports, OIA staff pay close attention to the information that can be inferred about respondents and follow aggregation procedures to prevent unintentional respondent disclosure. When Colgate has a relatively small community of a particular group, OIA would only provide data that aggregates across several groups to ensure that the confidentiality of respondents is maintained. For example, Colgate has a relatively small number of students of some racial groups. As a result, in reports, race and ethnicity is generally collapsed into two groups - students of color and white students - as the population of those combined groups is large enough to avoid accidentally disclosing the identity of any respondent.

Redaction is also used to limit the accidental identification of survey participants in narrative responses. For example, if a survey respondent were to disclose the office in which they worked at Colgate, that office name would be redacted from the response.