Survey Guidelines
NACADA sanctions all surveys
of association members prior to survey development and distribution.
Most
member surveys begin the sanctioning process with the approval
of a NACADA organizational unit (Commission,
Interest Group
or Region
see CIG
survey guidelines). Representatives of NACADA's organizational
units must receive clearance from Charlie Nutt, NACADA Executive
Director, prior to refining the proposed member survey. Start the clearance process by submitting a survey prospectus that includes:
- a 50-100 word statement of purpose
- who will be surveyed,
- survey topics,
- sample questions,
- human
subject/IRB approval status,
- anticipated survey
dates,
- whether or not the survey developer plans to utilize the NACADA survey system software.
Submit the prospectus to Charlie Nutt to begin the survey development approval process. Note: IRB approval must be garnered from the lead survey author's institution. IRB approval must be on file prior to survey distribution and prior to submission of a proposal to present the results of any proposed NACADA sanctioned survey at any NACADA sponsored event.
After
development clearance has been granted, survey authors should
contact Marsha Miller,
NACADA Assistant Director, Resources & Services, to discuss
survey design. This should be 4 - 6 months
prior to the desired survey start date.
Authors of sanctioned surveys may use
the on-line survey capabilities provided by the Kansas State University's
Axio Survey System or their own campus survey system. Which system used will determine ownership of the data. If the Kansas State Axio Survey System is utilized then survey data is owned by NACADA but permission is given to the survey developer to use the data for dissertation purposes.
A manuscript based upon the results of all NACADA sanctioned surveys is expected to be developed and submitted to the NACADA Journal for consideration for publication.
Designing
the Survey: Survey authors should keep the following
survey structural components in mind when designing their survey:
Required:
- Survey title
- Short description of the purpose and proposed use of the survey.
- Opening instructions for the person taking the survey including
deadline date.
- Optional separate instructions for each survey page.
- Closing statement.
Introductory
and reminder e-mails must be provided by the survey author.
The author must specify
what membership groups will
be surveyed. Groups must correspond to either the existing
association divisions or factors within the NACADA member database.
Surveys demographics questions must conform to the existing NACADA
demographic guidelines.
Examples include: commissions/interest groups, regions, roles,
and institution types. Design
surveys with no more than 30 questions.
Four
question types are available within the AXIO survey software used by NACADA. While question types
can be mixed throughout the survey, the software does NOT allow
for two part questions.
Response sets: Questions that
force respondents to choose a single response give the most useable
data. However respondents can be allowed to mark multiple responses.
(Multiple response answers must be analyzed by hand using data
taken from the Excel spreadsheet.) An "other" response
can be programmed into these questions and a comment box is available.
Comments will be printed in Excel and the survey author will have
to hand tabulate comments.
- Scale. This
option presents a set of attitude statements and asks respondent
to express agreement/disagreement or rating of a created scale.
Scales can range from 1-10. Although the default scale is "strongly
agree", "agree", "neutral", "disagree"
and strongly disagree" each statement can be individually
programmed with words groups up to 24 letters. Each scale can
have its own directions. There can be up to 10 statement points
on each scale but no sub-statements are allowed. Statements
appearing in a row under one scale will be numbered as one question
e.g. 10a, 10b, 10c (not 10, 11, 12) although results for each
statement will be reported in different spreadsheet cells for
ease of analysis.
- Ranking. Presents
a statement with a set of items that asks the respondent to
order the items with relation to the statement. There can be
separate directions for each ranking question. Respondents can
rank order up to 10 statements.
- Short Answer.
Short answer responses may consist of a phrase, sentence, or
paragraph. Responses are printed in Excel. The survey author
is responsible for tabulating comments.
Note:
Do not use quotation marks, apostrophes or contractions.
The software does not recognize the " or '
Administering
the Survey
Submit completed surveys
for final clearance. Once a survey receives final approval it
will be posted to a web site where authors can view it and suggest
editing changes prior to the survey being "published"
for member response. Note: once a survey has been administered
to even one member it can not be changed.
Survey groups will be
notified of the on-line survey site using the author submitted
e-mail. Surveys are usually available for 10 days but authors
may choose to make a survey available for a maximum of 3 weeks.
Survey
results
At completion, survey
results are downloaded into an Excel worksheet and the worksheet
is provided to the survey author for tabulation and evaluation.
Data from all NACADA sanctioned surveys are owned by NACADA.
Survey authors are expected to submit a manuscript, based upon
the survey results, for possible publication in the NACADA
Journal (see NACADA
Journal guidelines).
Survey authors may request permission to use results of NACADA
surveys in other venues, i.e., dissertation, presentations, publication,
etc.
Survey
resources:
