These guidelines apply to any person or office proposing to administer a survey to TCC students, faculty, or staff. For the purpose of these guidelines, a survey is defined as any set of questions administered to gather self‐report information not available through a standard data request, regardless of whether the survey is verbal, written, or electronic.
Purpose
The proliferation of surveys to college constituents raises important ethical, legal, and practical concerns, such as privacy, protection of human subjects, and survey fatigue from over‐surveying the same groups or administering multiple surveys at the same time or within a short time frame. The purpose of these guidelines is to provide a central, internal administration process in order to promote privacy, minimize survey fatigue, improve survey quality, and increase the reliability and validity of the data collected.
Who Needs to Know these Guidelines
TCC faculty, staff, administrators, students, external TCC consultants, and those not affiliated with the college who are proposing to survey TCC faculty, staff, administrators, or students.
Guidelines
Scope and Applicability
Any person or office, proposing to administer a survey to TCC students, faculty, staff, or administrators must first obtain written approval from the appropriate senior administrator(s) to administer and the Institutional Research office to schedule the survey on the official survey calendar (TCC Survey Administration Calendar in Outlook).
NOTE: These guidelines do not apply to an office that is surveying faculty or staff within its area, or faculty surveying students within a current section of their own course. Nor do they apply to surveys given immediately to attendees of an event (e.g., New Student Orientation, Paint the Zoo Blue) or service (e.g., after an advising session) to evaluate those events and services.
These guidelines do apply to all surveys in which the initiator plans to survey:
- A population that is not under his or her purview or work as set forth above;
- The entire faculty, staff, or student body, or any group of faculty, staff, or students under multiple supervisory chains;
- Populations that cross disciplines, departments, schools, or administrative areas; or
- Populations for any research project, thesis, dissertation, fellowship, etc.
For example, if Human Resources surveyed all Human Resources staff, or the English department chair surveyed all English faculty, they would not need to obtain approval from Institutional Research. Or, if Academic Advising created a survey to give students after each advising session, they would not need approval. However, if Academic Advising planned to send out a survey to all students who had been seen in Academic Advising over the past year, they would need to get approval.
In addition to following these guidelines, any survey that constitutes human subject research must also be reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board. It is recommended to first get approval to administer the survey(s) from the appropriate senior administrator and work with Institutional Research to schedule the appropriate timing of the survey before applying for Institutional Review Board approval.
Information Security Requirements
Any individual requesting survey participant contact information must adhere to all applicable information security policies and FERPA guidelines and laws.
Survey respondent contact information must not be shared with or provided to other offices or to other individuals (either internal or external to the college) beyond the scope of the survey and must not be reused to administer other surveys without written permission from the Institutional Research office. When survey data to be stored on computers, servers, or other devices is confidential per the Information Security Policy, the device must be password protected and encrypted.
Process for Survey Administration Approval
Anyone interested in administering a survey that falls under these guidelines must complete the following steps.
- Complete the online Survey Administration Approval Form.
- Work with the Institutional Research office to determine which senior administrator(s) approval the requestor must obtain. Get written approval from the appropriate senior administrator(s).
- Schedule a survey with the Institutional Research office so the survey can appear on the official TCC Survey Administration Calendar in Outlook.
- Obtain additional approval through Institutional Review Board, if applicable.
- If you need a list of contact information for survey administration, or if you are planning to administer an online survey, complete the online service request form. Remember, all online surveys that fall under the purview of these guidelines must be designed using the official TCC Qualtrics template and administered by the Office of Institutional Research or the Office of Student Assessment.
Note: If the survey is not fully developed prior to submitting any forms, the requestor should work with Institutional Research or Student Assessment to finalize the survey. The request will not be elevated for final approval until the survey instrument is fully developed.
Requests will be approved based on the content and quality of the survey, the number of requests to survey the same population, and the dates of survey administration. All requests will first be reviewed by the Director of Institutional Research and Institutional Research Manager. The Director or Manager will inform the requestor from whom the appropriate person is to request senior administration approval depending on the intended respondents. The following will give final approval for survey requests:
- Requests to survey Students will be reviewed by the Vice President of Student Affairs or their designee
- Requests to survey Faculty members (full‐time and/or adjuncts) will be reviewed by the Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer or designee
- Requests to survey Professional Staff members will be reviewed by the Professional Staff Council president and the Chief Human Resources Officer or designee
- Requests to survey College Staff members will be reviewed by the College Staff Council chair and the Chief Human Resources Officer or designee
- Requests to survey all full‐time and/or part‐time employees (including faculty) will be reviewed by the President’s Office
Surveys Administration Format
All surveys to be administered in an online format will be administered using Qualtrics, the online survey tool purchased by TCC. Unless otherwise approved, surveys will be developed in and administered from Qualtrics by the Institutional Research office or Student Assessment office.
Questions?
For questions regarding these guidelines, contact TCC’s Institutional Research office at 918‐595‐7925 or ir@tulsacc.edu.
