Climate Survey Respondent Protections

Project Title: Creating a Destination of Choice at Missouri S&T 

Principal Investigator/Researcher: Jessica Cundiff, Ph.D. 

IRB Reference Number: 2072686 

The S&T ADVANCE research team is extremely concerned about protecting the identities of survey respondents. To minimize the risk that responses could be identifiable: 

• Survey data will be collected by an external evaluator (Goshen Consulting) and stored on a secure non-University server that only the external evaluator can access. Only the external evaluator will have access to identifiable information. 
• Survey responses will be assigned to a random, non-identifying ID number generated by the external evaluator. Email addresses are used for initial email invites/reminders; they are NOT included in the file containing survey responses.  
• One file that matches the random ID in the datafile to an identifying email address will be created by the external evaluator and stored on a secure, password-protected, non-University server. Only the external evaluator will have access to this file, and the file will be deleted once data collection is completed. This file allows the external evaluator to link responses over time to perform longitudinal analyses for evaluation purposes. 
• The external evaluator will remove any identifying information from the data prior to sharing with the S&T ADVANCE research team. In other words, the S&T ADVANCE research team will only have access to anonymous (i.e., deidentified) data.  
• Some combinations of variables on the survey could be identifying (for example, the combination of college, gender, race-ethnicity, and rank). Because of this possibility, the external evaluator will remove, code, or condense any potentially identifying combinations of variables (i.e., combinations that result in fewer than 5 group members) before the data is shared with the S&T ADVANCE research team. The research team consists of Dr. Cundiff and student research assistants, all of whom have completed training for ethical human subject research.

Additionally, results will be reported only in aggregate and only for groups with 5 or more members to ensure that participants’ identities cannot be determined. Responses will be aggregated for each department, and a summary report will be provided to the respective department chair and dean. Department chairs will receive a summary report for their department only. This department-level data will NOT be reported by any demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, race-ethnicity, rank) to protect participant identity; however, some results may be restricted to responses from tenured/tenure-track faculty.