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Assessment survey discontinued
Less than a week after an online cultural assessment survey was made available to SCSU students, faculty and staff, the instrument has been suspended.
Steve Ludwig, SCSU vice president for administrative affairs, in a message to the campus community, said that there had been many issues raised publicly and privately regarding the Web-based cultural assessment survey.
"These concerns are sufficiently serious to cause the university to suspend the survey," he said. "We are exploring next steps to continue the important work of cultural assessment and improvement."
The survey was prepared by an outside consultant, Nichols and Associates, Inc. of Washington, D.C., who had been hired by SCSU to assess the cultural climate on campus.
Nichols researchers were on campus in November and conducted about 40 focus groups and also met individually with faculty, staff and students who had requested personal interviews. Questions for the survey were based on the results from the focus groups and interviews.
Lisa Foss, SCSU director of marketing and communications, said most of the complaints were due to technical problems that participants faced when taking the survey.
"(Ludwig) has been working with Nichols and getting input from people on campus," she said. "Basically, from what I understand, there had been some concerns about the technical aspects (of the survey): The way it was presented, how the screens looked."
In some cases, participants would scroll up after answering questions and find their answers missing. This, Foss said, raised concerns about whether the survey was capturing the correct information.
"There were also concerns about how the questions were developed and how they were phrased," Foss said.
One other concern was the fact that some people were taking the survey multiple times.
"They used different names, or different ID numbers," Foss said.
However, this was not too much of a worry, as Nichols and Associates has a mechanism in place to ensure that the integrity of the survey is not harmed. There is a way, Foss said, in which the survey administrators can check ID numbers with SCSU's enrollment.
Survey-takers are required to type in their e-mail addresses and staff or student ID number. However, the identities of participants are kept secret and not in any way tied to the answers they give. The purpose of this is to allow survey administrators to ensure that people did not take the survey more than once.
So far, no one has brought up concerns about the possibility of a breach in anonymity.
The suspension of the survey has so far only caused a delay to the cultural assessment being carried out by Nichols. And university administrators hope that it stays that way.
"Ideally, (the only problem caused is) by delaying the results," Foss said. "(The next step is to) refine the survey to the point that there is confidence across the university."
Foss said there was no estimate yet as to when the survey would be made available again.
Ludwig has been working with Nichols and Associates in place of Larry Chambers, SCSU director of human relations, who is away on vacation. Chambers is in charge of liaising with the consulting firm on the cultural assessment.
This is one of four different assessments of the racial climate on campus. Two have already been completed, while the results of another has yet to be disclosed.
Both the reports released by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas as well as the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found evidence of the existence of perceived racial bias on campus.
Leslie Andres can be reached at: [email protected]
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