Campus Climate Survey FAQs

Campus climate is the current attitudes and behaviors of employees and students, as well as institutional policies and procedures, which influence the level of respect for individual needs, abilities, and potential. The climate is often shaped through personal experiences, perceptions, and institutional efforts, and can influence personal, professional, and educational outcomes, as well as individuals’ and the community’s well-being. 

The idea to conduct a campus climate survey originated from interested students, faculty and staff who believed data from such a survey might be useful in planning for the future and improving the climate at JHU. This was also part of the JHU Roadmap initiative. “The University will collaborate with the divisions to develop, conduct, assess, and publish the results of a regular university wide JHU climate survey, with common questions for all stakeholders, as well as targeted questions pertinent to the experiences of faculty, staff, and students, respectively.” 

All JHU undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars/fellows/residents, staff, faculty and senior administrators enrolled or employed in spring 2023 were invited to participate.

To ensure transparency, the university established the Climate Study Working Group, a diverse group of JHU affiliates representing students, postdoctoral scholars, staff, and faculty across all academic divisions and administrative units. To provide external expertise, we engaged Rankin Climate to conduct the survey. Rankin Climate has conducted multi-location institutional climate studies at more than 240 institutions across the country. Rankin Climate reported directly to the committee throughout the entire assessment process.

Survey questions were based, in part, on a repository developed and tested by Rankin Climate, the outside experts who conducted the JHU Climate Assessment. The  Climate Study Working Group, made up of Johns Hopkins University students, staff, faculty, and postdoctoral scholars, reviewed every survey question, edited them to provide JHU-specific context, and approved the final survey instrument.

It is important in campus climate research for survey participants to “see” themselves in response choices, particularly given that the survey has an intended purpose of inclusiveness. Along these lines, survey respondents saw a long list of possible choices for some demographic questions and were provided with a write-in option in most cases. It is impossible to include every possible choice to every question, but the goal was to reduce the number of respondents who must choose “other.”

The climate survey project was reviewed and approved by the university’s Homewood Institutional Review Board (HIRB). This beneficial process provides assurance to potential participants that their responses to the survey would remain confidential and affirmed the appropriateness of Rankin Climate and the university’s principal investigator’s data security protocols. In addition, the review and approval provided assurance to professional researchers who are accustomed to working with review board requirements and ensuring data protection. 

Rankin Climate provided the university with a final report, including a key findings summary, a narrative of the findings, descriptive statistics, and content analysis of the textual data.  The results are being used to guide and inform future diversity, equity, inclusion, and access initiatives at JHU, and have established a baseline for progress.

Although the committee believes the survey process itself is informative, we have sought and received commitment from the senior leaders that data will be used to plan for an improved climate at JHU.

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion produced reports for each of the University’s academic divisions and VP-level administrative units where the survey respondent population was large enough to provide results. Data may be available to academic researchers who submit a request to ODI. Separate IRB approval will be required. Presentations may be available to campus groups. Please use the data request form or contact us at [email protected] with questions.

Confidentiality is vital to the success of campus climate research; particularly as sensitive and personal topics are discussed. The consultant took multiple precautionary measures to enhance individual confidentiality and the de-identification of data, such as: 

• Ensuring that no data already protected through regulation or policy (e.g., Social Security number, campus identification number, medical information) was obtained through the survey,  
• Ensuring that no personally identifiable information will be shared through any publication or presentation resulting from the assessment,   Stripping IP addresses when the survey was submitted, 
• Running the survey on a firewalled web server with forced 256-bit SSL security, 
• Reporting all data only in aggregate or summary form, 
• Not reporting any group data for groups of fewer than five individuals, including combining groups or taking other measures to eliminate any potential for demographic information to be identifiable, 
• Separating comments submitted in response to the survey before sharing with the consultant so they were not attributed to any individual demographic characteristics, and 
• Redacting identifiable information submitted in qualitative comments before sharing with the university. 

There is no guarantee of complete confidentiality or assurance against the interception of data sent via the Internet by third parties, but there are best practices as described above. 

Rankin Climate uses a research data security description and protocol, which includes specific information on data encryption, the handling of personally identifiable information, physical security and a protocol for handling unlikely breaches of data security. The data from online participants will be submitted to a secure server hosted by the consultant. The SaaS hosting platforms are SOC2. The firewall is via Next-Gen Fortigate Firewall. Data is stored in a SQL database which can only be accessed by VPN via authorized personnel only. Our encryption for communication is via HTTPS TLS 1.2. Rankin Climate associates working on the BU project will have access to the raw data. All Rankin Climate analysts have CITI (Human Subjects) training and approval and have worked on similar projects for other institutions. The server performs an hourly and daily back up and stores the back up on a separate context offsite for safety.

The consultant has conducted more than 250 institutional surveys and maintains an aggregate merged database. The data from the JHU project will be merged with all other existing climate data stored indefinitely on the consultant’s secure server. No institutional identifiers are included in the full merged data set held by the consultant. The raw unit-level data with institutional identifiers is kept on the server for six months and then destroyed. The paper and pencil surveys are returned to the consultant directly and kept in a locked file drawer in a locked office. The consultant destroys the paper and pencil responses after they are merged with the online data. The consultant will notify the committee chairs of any breach or suspected breach of data security of the consultant’s server.

The consultant will provide the primary investigator with a data file at the completion of the project.

If you have additional questions about the campus climate survey not covered in this FAQ, please contact us at [email protected].