Campus Survey Coordination
The Center of Institutional Effectiveness supports surveys of broad
institutional importance and helps the campus use existing data and
survey resources effectively. The level and type of support depend on
the project's scope, purpose, requirements, and available capacity.
Two levels of support
Self-service and targeted technical support
Faculty, staff, and students can use the survey guidance on this
website to select a tool, locate training, and follow recommended
survey practices.
General Qualtrics feature questions, survey-building instructions,
and routine troubleshooting should begin with available training
and self-guided resources.
CIE can help when an issue requires UC Merced Qualtrics
brand-administrator access. Examples may include account settings,
user permissions, group-library administration, project ownership,
or another brand-level configuration.
Institutional survey consultation
Faculty and staff may request more extensive support for
institution-wide surveys, administrative surveys, program reviews,
and evaluations.
Students proposing an institutional-level survey should work with
a sponsoring faculty or staff member.
Support is scoped project by project and may depend on the
institutional purpose, schedule, complexity, data requirements,
and available capacity.
Services for campus-level survey projects
Depending on the agreed project scope, CIE may provide support in the
following areas.
Planning and consultation
- Initial consultation
- Review of whether a survey is needed
- Identification of existing institutional data
- Coordination with related institutional survey activity
Instrument development
- Survey instrument design
- Question review
- Qualtrics programming
- Accessibility-informed design and testing
Survey administration
- Contact-list support
- Survey distribution
- Launch and administration planning
- Project-specific scheduling
Results and reporting
- Analysis
- Reporting
- Dashboard development
- Responsible presentation of results
Service boundaries
CIE does not generally design or administer personal, classroom, or
unit-level projects that do not have a broader institutional purpose.
For those projects, campus users should use the available survey
guidance to select an appropriate tool and locate training resources.
CIE may provide targeted assistance when a Qualtrics issue requires
brand-administrator access. General feature guidance, survey-building
questions, and routine troubleshooting should begin with available
documentation and training.
Anonymous and confidential survey designs
Anonymous and confidential are different survey designs. The
respondent-facing description should accurately match the survey
configuration, distribution method, data access, and reporting
practices.
Anonymous survey
An anonymous survey is designed so that respondent identities are
not associated with responses.
Whether a survey can accurately be described as anonymous depends
on the complete survey build. Relevant considerations include the
distribution method, authentication settings, embedded
information, response tracking, metadata, question content, and
access to results.
A survey should not be described as anonymous until the complete
design has been reviewed.
Confidential survey
A confidential survey may allow authorized project staff to
connect identities or identifiable information with responses.
Access to identifiable responses should be limited to project team
members with an appropriate university business need.
Results should be presented in a way that protects respondents and
avoids unnecessarily exposing individual responses or small
groups.
Important:
Anonymous and confidential surveys are not interchangeable. The
description provided to respondents must match how the survey is
configured and how the resulting information will be handled.
Information security and higher-risk information
Confirm requirements before collecting higher-risk information
Do not begin collecting protected, sensitive, or regulated
information until the project team has confirmed that the selected
platform and the planned access, storage, sharing, retention, and
reporting practices are appropriate.
Information that may require additional institutional review
includes:
- Social Security numbers
- Immigration or citizenship information
- Financial account or payment information
- Health or medical information
- Passwords or account authentication information
- Government-issued identification numbers
-
Other information that could create significant harm if accessed,
used, or disclosed inappropriately
These examples are not an exhaustive list. The type of information
being collected may affect the appropriate collection tool, access
model, storage location, distribution process, retention plan, and
reporting method.
Qualtrics should not be used to collect higher-risk information
unless the project has received an appropriate institutional review
and the proposed use is consistent with applicable requirements.
Responsible use of survey information
Survey information should be accessed and used only for authorized
university business.
Access should be limited to individuals with an appropriate
university business need. Survey information should not be shared
with individuals who do not have approved access.
Results should be presented at an appropriate level of aggregation.
Reporting should avoid presenting identifiable responses or
unmasked small-group results when those results could expose
individual respondents.
Survey information should be handled in accordance with applicable
privacy, information-security, accessibility, data-governance, and
records-management requirements.
Accessibility
CIE works to make survey content and survey reporting accessible.
Accessibility considerations inform survey structure, instructions,
response controls, keyboard operation, validation, testing,
alternative access, dashboards, documents, and communication of
results.
Survey projects should use clear instructions, meaningful labels,
understandable validation messages, and layouts that work across
different screen sizes.
Testing should consider keyboard use, assistive technology, mobile
presentation, survey logic, response options, and access to assistance
or an alternative format when needed.
Prepare a consultation request
Providing the following information will help CIE understand the
request and determine an appropriate next step.
- Project sponsor and responsible campus unit
-
Decision, requirement, or institutional need the project will
support - Intended survey population and estimated scope
- Existing data, dashboards, reports, or surveys already reviewed
- Proposed launch date, close date, and date results are needed
- Draft survey questions or instrument, if available
- Requested services and expected deliverables
-
Privacy, information-security, accessibility, research, or other
project requirements - Planned use, analysis, reporting, and follow-up
Schedule and possible costs
Project schedules are determined individually. Some recurring
institutional survey timelines are published in the campus survey
calendar.
CIE does not currently charge for consultation or support. A project
may have separate technical or vendor costs, including optional paid
Qualtrics services. Any possible cost should be identified and
approved before a paid service is used.
Request help
Review the available survey guidance first. If institutional survey
consultation or UC Merced Qualtrics brand-administrator assistance is
needed, contact Analytics Hub.
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Email Analytics Hub
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href="https://cie.ucmerced.edu/contact-us">
View CIE contact information
A separate survey intake form is not yet available. Survey requests
may currently be sent to Analytics Hub by email.
