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Survey Audience / Job Categories Included
1. Does the ModernThink Higher Education Insight Survey go to everyone on campus? The audience for the faculty/staff survey is full-time Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff who are employed at campuses located in the United States and its territories. Participating institutions are asked to provide a random sample of 400-600 full-time Faculty, Administrators, and Exempt Professional Staff. That sample should be proportionally divided meaning that each group should represent the same proportion of the sample as it does of the entire combined population of all full-time Faculty / Administration / Exempt Professional Staff. Please refer to the document titled Email List and Random Selection Process document on the Downloads page for specific instructions. If your population of these three job categories is less than 400 employees, then all of your full-time Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff members are asked complete the survey. For some institutions, it may be helpful to categorize your Administrative Staff to count as the "Executive/Administrative/Managerial" category on your IPEDS, and the same for Exempt Professional Staff. We do not include "Other Non-Exempt Staff" as part of the survey (IPEDS defines these job categories as: Technical & paraprofessionals, Clerical & Secretarial, Skilled Crafts and Service Maintenance.) Ultimately, just like all other organizations today, we have had to make difficult choices and prioritize resources. We have chosen to focus on service to The Chronicle's primary readership, Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff. Here are some reasons why: First, as sponsors of the Great Colleges program, both The Chronicle and ModernThink are committed to keeping participation free for any qualifying school. Second, we want to collect the most statistically robust data sets possible (which is no small feat, especially with notoriously low response rates for faculty). Accordingly, whereas most recognition programs use sample sizes of 250 to 400, we are making a substantial investment to survey 400 to 600 faculty/staff at each school - an average of 50% more employees. Given the particular nature of the academic audience, we believe it's an investment worth making. Third, this is not a straight ranking like the Fortune list, for example, where individual job roles are completely irrelevant. We recognize schools across a broad range of recognition categories, some of which are specific to Job Category (Faculty, for example). Therefore, having a critical mass of responses within each of the three categories is important. The very real impact of including a fourth Job Category would be the dilution of the samples collected for the other three, potentially leaving us vulnerable to criticisms over statistical validity within a particular category (justified or not). Limiting the survey audience has been a trade-off we've made to help ensure that critical mass. Weighing all of the factors involved, we have deliberately focused on the depth of the analysis and the service provided to The Chronicle's primary readership. Finally, we have heard from some institutions that their union contracts would bar them from participating if we were to require surveying Non-Exempt Staff. See Applicant Resources to learn more about surveying beyond the survey sample required and/or surveying beyond this survey audience including part-time staff members and/or "Other Staff". 2. How are the Job Categories defined? The Job Categories are defined based on IPEDS classifications at https://surveys.nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ Administrators have assignments which require management of the institution, or a customarily recognized department or subdivision thereof. Assignments require the performance of work directly related to management policies or general business operations of the institution, department or subdivision. Assignments in this category customarily and regularly require the incumbent to exercise discretion and independent judgment. Faculty have assignments for the purpose of conducting instruction, research or public service as a principal activity (or activities). Exempt Professional Staff perform academic support, student service, and institutional support. Exempt Professional Staff are not subject to FLSA overtime provisions and are paid an annual salary for all hours worked. Exempt employees include, but are not limited to, the following: professionals; those who exercise independent judgment and discretion in their roles; and/or those who manage other people. Non-exempt staff can be hourly or salaried. They are typically administrative, operational or production employees. The specific job roles under each job category appear in the ModernThink Higher Education Insight Survey© as follows:
3. Does the survey include Adjunct Faculty? Adjunct Faculty (whether full-time or part-time) are only included under the Faculty Job Category for participating Associate Colleges. 4. Who decides which full-time Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff will receive the surveys? Participating institutions will be asked to provide a sample of 400-600 full-time Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff email addresses depending on the institution’s population size of full-time Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff (see table below). Survey Sample Size Requirement
*Your random selection should be proportional to your Faculty /Administrators/Exempt Professional Staff populations. **Neither of these numbers should include your Non-Exempt Staff. ModernThink provides guidance and specific instructions for selecting the random sample but it will be up to each institution to perform this selection. We also ask each institution to document their random selection process on the Survey Verification Form, which can be completed and uploaded to the Administrative Portal. Download the Random Sample Generation Instructions and the Employee Survey Verification Form on the Downloads page. The random selection should be made across each institution’s entire full-time Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff population working in the United States and its territories. Please be sure that the number of employees representing each of the three Job Categories in your sample is proportional to the total number of employees in each of these categories at your institution. If you are supplying email addresses, it is your responsibility to make sure that the employee email addresses are current and accurate. Review specific instructions on supplying your emails and creating your random sample from the Downloads page. 5. What if we want to survey more than the random sample of our full-time Faculty, Administrators and/or Exempt Professional Staff (audience for program)? Based on requests from applicants last year, ModernThink has provided the opportunity to survey beyond the random sample included as part of the program. For a fee, applicants can broaden the survey audience to include:
In each of these instances of what we call “oversampling”, the institution will use the standard survey and standard demographics. There is a limit on the number of faculty/staff that can be included in an oversampling. Click here for more information about oversampling. If you are interested in expanding the survey audience, please contact Janet Wurtzel at 1.888.684.4658 ext.117 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . 6. What if our workforce contains union employees? This is not an issue. We make no distinction between union and non-union employees. Union employees must be included in the random selection for the survey process. 7. How do you ensure that participating institutions do not distribute surveys to the most satisfied staff members? All participating institutions will be required to complete the Survey Verification Form (available on the Downloads page and the Administrative Portal), which requires you to document the details of the survey process, including sampling methodology and distribution techniques. ModernThink may also follow up with individual institutions to verify their processes and ensure compliance with the program rules. ModernThink reserves the right to disqualify any school at any time if non-compliance is suspected. 8. Do we have to complete the surveys online? Yes. 9. Not all of our staff have email addresses. Can we still use the online survey? Yes. The online survey can still be used as long as employees without email addresses are able to access the Internet. In this scenario, ModernThink would provide login sets (usernames and passwords) for employees without email addresses so that they can complete the online survey. Institutions will need to alert ModernThink to their need for login sets and how many they need for Faculty, Administration and Exempt Professional Staff. Your institution’s Survey Coordinator (this may be the Primary Contact) will be responsible for distributing login sets to those individuals based on their Job Category (Faculty/Administration/Exempt Professional Staff), along with an instruction letter/email. 10. Will we have an opportunity before the survey to let our staff know the reason for the survey? It is important to share with employees the context for the survey and encourage their participation. We have a sample pre-survey communication you can use to set the stage. Samples of these communications are available on the Downloads page. The survey invitation also provides background information about The Chronicle's Great Colleges to Work For program. 11. Will the survey that goes to Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff include an introduction? Yes, each survey will have a brief introduction that explains The Chronicle's Great Colleges to Work For program and the purpose of the survey. However, it is important that you pre-communicate the purpose of the survey approximately a week or two before the survey launch. Best practices around this communication include a letter to your campus community as well as more individual communications to your faculty and staff from your senior leadership team. Sample pre-survey communications are available on the Downloads page. 12. How long will it take for our staff to complete the survey? The survey consists of 60 statements, 15 benefit satisfaction statements, 2 open-response questions and 15 demographics questions. It typically takes about 20-25 minutes to complete. Select ModernThink Higher Education Insight Survey© to see a sample of the survey. 13. How do we ensure an adequate response rate? The key to a strong response rate is proactive communication. It will be very important to send out pre-communication a week or two before the survey to explain your participation in Great Colleges to your community, and to encourage active and honest participation. Communication templates are available on the Downloads page. |
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