The first-ever Dartmouth Community Study — a comprehensive survey that will ask questions about learning, working and living at the College — will be released to faculty, students and staff on Tuesday through the Provost’s Office, vice provost for academic initiatives Denise Anthony said.
The survey will be released via email and will stay open from Oct. 6 to Nov. 3, Anthony said. A follow-up survey will be conducted again in the spring.
A working group of 10 members — including College staff, faculty and a student representative — began meeting last spring and worked throughout the summer with the firm Rankin and Associates Consulting to create the survey, Anthony said.
Rankin and Associates specializes in the study of campus climate at colleges and universities, Anthony said. It has administered surveys similar to the Dartmouth Community Study at more than 130 higher education institutions, according to the Provost Oficce’s website. In creating the survey, the working group reviewed Rankin and Associates’ previously used, validated set of survey questions and then tailored them to be more specific to the College.
Rankin and Associates principal Susan Rankin declined to comment for this article, directing inquiries to Anthony.
Office of Pluralism and Leadership interim director and working group member Reese Kelly said that the goal of the survey is to learn more about “day-to day life” at the College.
The Community Study is “one of the most comprehensive data collection instruments we’re using at the College and that we’ve ever used at the institution” to learn about campus climate, he said.
The survey will ask students, faculty and staff questions in myriad areas, spanning from experiences in the classroom to off-campus settings, asking about both positive experiences and those of bias and harassment, Anthony said.
Kelly said that he hopes that the faculty can use the information to learn how better serve students and build a more comprehensive understanding of life on campus. Additionally, he said that the survey may allow the College to better prioritize certain tasks in the future.
Oscar Cornejo Jr. ’17 — the student representative on the working group — wrote in an email that the survey could be critical in understanding the current campus climate.
Cornejo wrote that since the results will be distributed to campus, students will be able to see, “without filters,” the areas in which “we completely fail and where we succeed.” He added that the survey is critical to the future of Dartmouth for all sectors of the College community.
He added that he hopes the survey will prompt administrators, and in particular high-level administrators, “to make changes at Dartmouth beyond what we are currently implementing.”
Another goal of the Community Study is to gauge the effect of the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” policy changes between now and when an additional study is conducted in two years, Anthony said.
In particular, Anthony said that since the new residential community system will be implemented next fall, the results of this year’s survey will provide a benchmark from which to measure any changes.
While the study was introduced as a part of “Moving Dartmouth Forward,” the idea of conducting a climate study is not new, Anthony said.
“There have been recommendations for doing a climate study for about 10 years from various groups on campus over time, so I think it’s part of ‘Moving Dartmouth Forward,’ but it also, I think, comes out of recommendations from lots of groups on campus,” she said.
The Community Study differs greatly from the Association of American Universities survey that was released last month, Kelly said. The Community Study includes a far wider range of data and focuses on faculty and staff as well as students, he said, though it does still include some questions about sexual harassment.
The study will be in the format of a close-ended survey with room at the end for participants to provide optional open-ended responses, Anthony said. Additionally, it will provide links to on- and off-campus resources throughout that participants can contact with concerns or questions, or to discuss their experience with the survey, she said.
The study will be voluntary and confidential, Anthony said. Participants are not required to answer all questions, but only surveys that are 50 percent completed or more will be analyzed. The survey will not ask participants to disclose their names, but they will be asked to identify themselves as staff, faculty or students and will be asked questions specific to their respective category, she said.
“Sometimes people think that they should only fill out the survey if they’ve had a bad experience in one area, or the other, and I think its so important for us to understand what the experience is like for everyone, for more people to take it,” Kelly said.
The Provost’s Office expects that the survey should take 15 to 20 minutes to complete. To maintain confidentiality, the survey will not use individualized URLs or save answers over time, according to Provost’s Office. Because of this, the survey must be completed in a single sitting. Additionally, any personally identifiable comments shared in open-responses will not be publicly shared in the survey report.
Upon completing the survey, participants will be eligible to enter a raffle for gift certificates to local restaurants and gatherings with College President Phil Hanlon and Provost Carolyn Dever or an iPad Air. Faculty and staff who complete the survey will also be eligible to enter a drawing for a free on-campus parking space for one term, according to the Provost’s Office.
For those who cannot access the online survey on a personal device, the Provost’s Office will set up computers in Paganucci Lounge and the instructional center in Baker-Berry Library at different times during the survey period. Participants can also receive the survey in alternative format from the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity.
The survey results will be available to the public in spring 2016.
