FAQs

Applicant Process

1. What happens after I register my institution to participate?
2. What is the timeline?
3. What are the roles of the Primary, Secondary and IT Contacts?
4. How will my institution be notified throughout the survey process? Will we receive regular updates?
5. How are the survey participants on campus invited to take the survey?
6. What are the guidelines for doing my random sample?
7. How do I submit my email addresses?
8. We do not have email addresses for everyone but still want to do the faculty/staff survey online. Is there an alternative? How does it work?
9. What forms are part of the process?
10. How do I notify the faculty and staff on campus about participating in this program?
11. How long does it take to complete the faculty/staff survey?
12. How long does it take to complete the Institution Questionnaire (“IQ”)?
13. How does ModernThink protect the confidentiality of the survey data?
14. Is there a minimum response rate?
15. How do we ensure an adequate response rate? Can we offer incentives to participate?
16. When and how do we find out if we are recognized?

1. What happens after I register my institution to participate?

You will receive a confirmation email that your registration has been received. Beginning in January, ModernThink will remind you of key deadlines. One of the most important resources is the Participation Checklist which you should refer to frequently throughout the process. It contains a detailed list of important dates and deadlines as well as links to key documents, forms and instructions. When registration closes for the program in February 2012, you will be emailed access information to a web-based Administrative Portal. You will use this site to upload your email addresses as well as the forms required for the process. Please see the FAQ for the Administrative Portal for more information on this important ModernThink communication tool.

2. What is the timeline?

This information is also available at Timeline. For a more detailed timeline, please review the Participation Checklist.

3. What are the roles of the Primary, Secondary and IT Contacts?

The Primary Contact is the main point of contact responsible for all survey coordination. Often times, this role is filled by an HR or IR representative because completion of the Institutional Questionnaire takes the most significant amount of his/her time during the survey process if this is the institution’s first year of participation.

The Secondary Contact operates as a support role for the Primary Contact.

The IT Contact is responsible for facilitating the technical aspects of the survey process. His/her role includes: white listing the program domains, IP addresses and email addresses on your institution’s email server; participating in the Connectivity Test performed prior to the survey launch to enable a smooth survey process; and being available during the survey period from March 19 to April 13 to troubleshoot any technical issues.

4. How will my institution be notified throughout the survey process? Will we receive regular updates?

You will receive periodic updates regarding the survey timeline via email, and our website is designed to be highly self-service and is rich with resources and instructions. We recommend that you note all of the important dates found on the Participation Checklist and Timeline on your calendar. In addition, once registration closes, each applicant will be given access to a web-based Administrative Portal where the Primary Contact at your institution can upload emails, forms and track survey responses.

ModernThink primarily works through email. It is important that you read all instructions sent to you from the program partners.

5. How are the survey participants on campus invited to take the survey?

There are two ways that survey participants will be invited to take the survey:

• Email Addresses – If your population of survey respondents has access to individual email accounts, ModernThink will send the survey invitations and reminders directly to each survey participant via email. Email addresses such as This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it are not acceptable because multiple people potentially have access to the same login information.

  The survey coordinator at each institution is required to submit a list of email addresses  through the Administrative Portal that proportionally represents the number of Faculty, Administrators and Exempt Professional Staff who are on campus. In order to take advantage of real-time response rate monitoring, each of the email addresses should be labeled to identify whether the person is Faculty, Administrator or Exempt Professional Staff. See FAQ Survey Audience / Job Categories for more information on the survey audience.  See Downloads for the full instructions on how to generate an email list.

• Login Sets - Alternatively, if some of your staff do not have email addresses, but are able to gain access to the internet, they can still participate in the online survey. ModernThink will provide the primary contact with a list of login sets through the Administrative Portal to distribute that include a user name and unique passwords for each participant. Full instructions on the login set process awill be available on the Applicant Portal.

6. What are the guidelines for doing my random sample?

Full instructions on generating your institution’s random sample of email addresses are available on the Downloads page.

7. How do I submit my email addresses?

Instructions for generating and submitting your email list are available on the Downloads page. All emails will be uploaded by the Primary Contact through the Administrative Portal, which will be available after registration closes in early February.

8. We do not have email addresses for everyone but still want to do the faculty/staff survey online. Is there an alternative? How does it work?

If some of your staff do not have email addresses, but are still able to gain access to the internet, they can participate in the online survey. ModernThink will provide the Primary Contact with a list of “login sets” to distribute that include a user name and unique passwords for each participant. Institutions will use their Administrative Portal to alert ModernThink that they need login sets, and how many they need for Faculty, Administration and Exempt Professional Staff.

These login sets will be downloaded by your Institution's Primary Contact  through the Administrative Portal. They will be supplied as a spreadsheet containing rows of unique username and password combinations. Your institution’s 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.

Full instructions on the login set process are available on the Downloads page.

9. What forms are part of the process?

All of the forms and documents you will need throughout the process are available on the Downloads page. Please do not submit any forms to ModernThink directly as the Primary Contact will upload these after registration closes using the Administrative Portal.

10. How do I notify the faculty and staff on campus about participating in this program?

Pre-survey communication of the employee survey is critical. This communication should be sent by your institution to your full-time faculty, administrators and exempt professional staff. Sample Communication Templates are available on the Downloads page. We recommend several touch points to your campus community before the survey begins.

11. How long will it take for our staff to complete the faculty/staff 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. Click here to see a sample of the ModernThink Higher Education Insight Survey^© .

12. How long does it take to complete the Institution Questionnaire (“IQ”)?

Virtually all of the information required for the IQ is data that your school is already collecting for IPEDS. Still, because there are over 150 questions, you should budget 10 to 20 hours to complete the IQ, if it's your first year participating. In subsequent years, your previous year’s IQ data will automatically upload. So the time commitment should be substantially reduced because you will simply need to update the pre-populated data and answer any new questions that are added.

13. How does ModernThink protect the confidentiality of the survey data?

At ModernThink, we go to great lengths to ensure the anonymity of your employees' survey responses. Examples include the following:

• ModernThink collects and stores all of the data on its secure servers.
• All survey takers are provided with a confidential, toll-free hotline which they can call anonymously with any questions or concerns.
• We only report data back to institutions when there are five or more participants in a particular demographic category.
  
• Survey takers are reminded before responding to the open-ended questions not to include any self-identifying information.
• Questions about demographics are strictly on a volunteer basis, unless otherwise disclosed to the survey takers.

Select Statement of Confidentiality for further details how we protect the confidentiality of your survey data. Additional information is available in the FAQ Confidentiality section.

If you have any questions about the Statement of Confidentiality, please contact the ModernThink Great Colleges team at 888.684.4658.

14. Is there a minimum response rate?

On the faculty/staff survey, there is not a specific set response rate needed to be eligible for consideration. Given the wide range of faculty/employee populations at the participating institutions, statistical validity varies, even at the same response rate. Instead, ModernThink reviews confidence levels and confidence intervals to ensure statistical significance. ModernThink reserves the right to eliminate a school where it believes there is not statistical validity.

On the IQ, ModernThink reserves the right to eliminate a school where there is not substantive completion of the questionnaire.

15. How do we ensure an adequate response rate? Can we offer incentives to participate?

The key to a strong response rate is proactive communication. It will be very important to send out pre-survey communication a week or two before the survey begins 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.

In order to ensure a level playing field for all participants, incentives of any kind are strictly prohibited.  In other words, your organization may not provide any enticements either to try to drive up response rates or influence employees’ answers.  Incentives include, but are not limited to, the following: monetary gifts, prizes, time off, food, drawings, raffles, bonuses, etc.

The same is true for any penalties.  Your organization may not try to influence participation rates and/or responses by implicitly or explicitly threatening any adverse impact on employees who choose to participate or not and/or who choose to respond/answer in a particular manner.

16. When and how do we find out if we are recognized?

The program results including recognized institutions will be published in The Chronicle's Academic Workplace supplement on August 3, 2012. All institutions will be notified in advance of publication both as to whether they are recognized and if so, in which categories. Because the program is also designed to help colleges improve as workplaces through the individual reports they receive, the names of schools that participated but were not recognized are not released.