Institutional Research Survey & Research Application

The purpose of an IRB (Institutional Review Board) is to assure the protection of the rights and welfare of the participants being researched. At TC3, the Survey & Research Review Committee (SARRC) is a formally recognized committee by the College Senate comprised of faculty and staff who work with the TC3 Institutional Research Department to handle survey approvals. 

Once you have decided that you want to administer a survey to any part of the TC3 community, here is a check list:

1. Create a written statement about the objectives of your survey.
2. Determine how and by whom the results of this survey will be used. Will you need IRB approval?
3. Determine who will receive the survey and how.
4. Write your survey and pilot-test the questions. 
5. Determine who will compile the survey population, administer the survey, and handle the data analysis.
6. Determine when and how long the survey will be administered.
7. Submit a TC3 Research Approval Request

Note that the TC3 Survey & Research Review Committee (SARRC) meets monthly during the fall and spring semesters. For your survey to be reviewed at the committee’s next meeting, submit your Survey Approval form by the 23rd of the preceding month. Within 3 business days after the committee meets, you will receive an email indicating IRB approval or non-approval of your survey application.

It is not possible to retrospectively review and approve a project once data collection has begun. If you are unsure how your data could be used in the future, err on the side of caution and submit a Research Approval form asking for IRB approval. If you would like documentation indicating that IRB approval is not needed, submit a Survey Approval form by the 23rd of the preceding month. 

If you have any questions, email IR@TompkinsCortland.edu.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education Glossary

• American Indian or Alaska Native – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community attachment.
• Asian – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.
• Associate’s degree – An award that normally requires at least 2 but less than 4 years of full-time equivalent college work. 
• Black or African American – A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.
• Certificate – A formal award certifying the satisfactory completion of a postsecondary education program. Tompkins Cortland Community College offers a number of certificates.
• Cohort – A specific group of students established for tracking purposes.
• Cohort year – The year that a cohort of students begins attending college.
• Completer – A student who receives a degree, diploma, certificate, or other formal award. In order to be considered a completer, the degree/award must actually be conferred.
• Concurrent Enrollment – A program (known at TC3 as CollegeNow) through which high school students may enroll in college courses while still enrolled in high school. Students are not required to apply for admission to the college in order to participate.
• Degrees – An award conferred by a college, university, or other post-secondary education institution as official recognition for the successful completion of a program of studies. Tompkins Cortland Community College offers associate degrees and certificates in 38 program areas.
• Distance education program – A program for which all the required coursework for program completion is able to be completed using one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor synchronously or asynchronously.
• Dual Enrollment – See Concurrent Enrollment.
• Fall cohort – The group of students who enter an institution as full-time, first-time degree or certificate-seeking undergraduate students during the fall term of a given year.
• First-Time Student – A student who has no prior postsecondary experience (except as noted below) attending any institution for the first time at the undergraduate level. It also includes students enrolled in the fall term who attended college for the first time in the prior summer term, and students who entered with advanced standing (college credits or recognized postsecondary credential earned before graduation from high school).
• Full-Time Student: Undergraduate – A student enrolled for 12 or more semester credits, or 12 or more quarter credits, or 24 or more contact hours a week each term.
• Graduation rate – The graduation rates measure the percentage of first-time undergraduate students who complete their program at the same institution within 150% of normal time divided by the revised cohort minus any allowable exclusions.
• High School Student – A student enrolled in secondary school or pursuing a high school diploma or recognized equivalent. Includes students who have not received but are pursuing a high school diploma or recognized equivalent and taking college coursework concurrently.
• Hispanic/Latino – A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.
• Initial cohort – A specific group of individuals established for tracking purposes.
• IPEDS – Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System. It is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). IPEDS gathers information from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs.
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.
• NCES – National Center for Education Statistics – The statistical branch of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, a principal operating component of the U.S. Department of Education. NCES collects statistics on the condition of education in the United States, analyzes and reports the meaning and significance of these statistics, and assists states and local education agencies in improving their statistical systems.
• Noncredit – A course or activity having no credit applicable toward a degree, diploma, certificate, or other recognized postsecondary credential. 
• Non-degree seeking student – A student enrolled in courses for credit who is not recognized by the institution as seeking a degree or formal award.
• Nonresident Alien or International – A person who is not a citizen or national of the United States and who is in this country on a visa or temporary basis and does not have the right to remain indefinitely.
• Part-Time Student: Undergraduate – A student enrolled for either 11 semester credits or less.
• Program – A combination of courses and related activities organized for the attainment of broad educational objectives as described by the institution.

• Race/ethnicity – Categories developed in 1997 that are used to describe groups to which individuals belong, identify with, or belong in the eyes of the community. Individuals are asked to first designate ethnicity as:

  • Hispanic or Latino
  • Not Hispanic or Latino

  Second, individuals are asked to indicate all races that apply among the following:

  • American Indian or Alaska Native
  • Asian
  • Black or African American
  • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
  • White
• Race/ethnicity unknown – The category used to report students or employees whose race and ethnicity are not known.
• Resident Alien – A person who is not a citizen or national of the United States and who has been admitted as a legal immigrant for the purpose of obtaining permanent resident alien status.
• Retention rate – A measure of the rate at which students persist in their educational program at an institution, expressed as a percentage. For two-year institutions, this is the percentage of first-time degree/certificate-seeking students from the previous fall who either re-enrolled or successfully completed their program by the current fall.
• Semester – A calendar system that consists of two sessions called semesters during the academic year with about 15 weeks for each semester of instruction. There may be an additional summer session.
• Transfer Out Rate – Total number of students who are known to have transferred out of the reporting institution within 150% of normal time to completion divided by the adjusted cohort. Access TC3's Transfer Rate.
• Transfer Student – A student entering the reporting institution for the first time but known to have previously attended another post-secondary institution.
• Undergraduate – A student enrolled in a 4- or 5-year bachelor's degree program, an associate's degree program, or a vocational or technical program below the baccalaureate.
• Unduplicated count – The sum of students enrolled for credit with each student counted only once during the reporting period.
• Unit ID – Unique identification number assigned to postsecondary institutions surveyed through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Tompkins Cortland Community College’s Unit ID is 196565.
• White – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

It’s helpful to write down the purpose of your research. What specifically do you want to know and why? This should provide clarity as you plan and create your survey.

Look to see if other surveys or research is already available on your topic. Have any other institutions done similar research and if so, can you get some ideas from how they administered their survey? What were their results?

Besides administering a paper or online survey, you may want to consider doing in-person interviews, focus groups or using pre-existing sources that have the same type of information you are looking for. Check with Institutional Research to see if there may already be a survey or report that provides the information you are seeking.

If you decide that you do want to administer a survey, think about WHEN you want to administer it. Depending on your audience, you will probably want to avoid the start and end of a semester, and close to or during a holiday break. Check the TC3 Survey Administration calendar  to see if there is already another survey planned at the same time you want to conduct your survey. Be mindful that when people receive too many surveys, that may lead to survey fatigue and declining response rates.

An online survey should be open long enough so that people have sufficient time to respond - at least one or two weeks, but not too long that responses have stopped coming in and analysis work will be delayed. If you are administering an in-person paper survey try to have a quiet, relaxed atmosphere so the people who take a little longer to go through the survey don’t feel pressured to rush through just to finish.

Effective surveys either provide informative about a specific topic or gather information that will help with decision making. Do not make the survey any longer than it needs to be. Avoid asking for information that would be “nice to know,” but not necessarily useful. Refer to the document that you created that states your survey purpose - what information you are hoping to gather.

As you design your survey questions, there are many resources on the internet to help you. Here are some common survey question mistakes:

1. Asking Leading Questions

   Subtle wording differences can produce great differences in results. Non-specific words and ideas can cause a certain level of confusing ambiguity in your survey. “Could,” “should,” and “might” all sound about the same, but may produce a difference in agreement to a question.

   In addition, strong words such as “force” and “prohibit” represent control or action and can bias your results.

   Example: The government should force you to pay higher taxes.
   No one likes to be forced, and no one likes higher taxes. The wording of this agreement scale question makes it sound doubly bad to raise taxes.

   Suggestion: The government should increase taxes. The government needs to increase taxes.

   Example: How would you rate the career of legendary outfielder Joe Dimaggio?
   This survey question tells you Joe Dimaggio is a legendary outfielder. This type of wording can bias respondents.

   Suggestion: How would you rate the career of baseball outfielder Joe Dimaggio?

2. Asking Vague Questions

   Questions that are vague and do not communicate your intent can limit the usefulness of your results. Make sure respondents know what you are asking.

   Example: What do you like to do for fun?
   Finding out that respondents like to play a specific video game, go out with friends, or go sky diving may or may not be what the question is really asking. A respondent could take this question in many directions.

3. Offering Vague Answer Choices or Not Enough Answer Choices

   Do you have all of the options covered? Multiple choice response options should be mutually exclusive and not be ambiguous.

   Example: What is your age? 10-20 / 20-30 / 30-40 / 40+
   What answer would someone select if they were age 20, or 30?

   Example: What type of vehicle do you own? Van; SUV; motorcycle
   What if the respondent owns multiple vehicles, other kinds of vehicles or no vehicle at all?

   Example: You indicated that you shop at Steve’s Shoppe once every 6 months. Why don’t you shop there more often? There isn’t one near my house/ I have never heard of it
   This question doesn’t include other possible options such as price/value or some “other” reason.

4. Poor Use of Likert Scales

   The bottom point should be the worst possible and top point as the best possible. Then evenly spread the labels for your scale points in-between.

   Example: What is your opinion of the Hotel Center? Pretty good; Great; Fantastic; Incredible; The Best Ever
   This question puts the center of the scale at fantastic, and the lowest possible rating as “Pretty Good.” This question is not capable of collecting true opinions of respondents.

   Here are some suggestions of good equidistant choices:

   • Strongly disagree / Disagree / Neither agree nor disagree / Agree / Strongly agree
   • Very Likely / Likely / Neutral / Not Likely / Very Unlikely
   • Very Happy/ Somewhat Happy / Neutral / Not Very Happy / Not at All Happy
   • Almost Always True / Usually True / Occasionally True / Usually Not True / Almost Never True

5. Asking About Multiple Items in One Question

   Make sure that your question is clear and focused.

   Example: How useful will this workshop be for students and young professionals in the field?
   This question is asking about two different groups of people who could have different opinions.

6. Using Absolute Statements

   Example: Do you always eat breakfast? Yes/ No
   Questions with “always,” “all,” “every,” “ever,” etc. in them will not provide useful feedback. These poorly, inflexible kind of questions usually have the options Yes/No. Instead, the question should have a variety of options that people can choose from.

   Suggestion: How many days a week do you usually eat breakfast? Every day / 5-6 days / 3-4 days / 1-2 days / I usually don’t eat breakfast

7. Not Offering a “Prefer Not to Answer” Option

   Questions about income, occupation, finances, family life, personal hygiene, personal, political, or religious beliefs can feel too intrusive and should be asked only when necessary.

   Privacy is an important issue to most people. Incentives and assurances of confidentiality can help make it easier to obtain some private information, but many respondents appreciate a “prefer not to answer” option. While some may choose to skip a question, others may stop and discontinue answering the survey entirely.

Once you have developed your questions, it is helpful to test you survey questions with a small group of volunteers – if possible, with the same background as your intended survey population (e.g., students, employees, etc.). If you have an online survey that uses skip logic, be sure that is tested as well. Ask your volunteers for their feedback. What is clear in your head may be unclear to others. That way you can make sure that the survey questions and response options make sense. Refer to the Survey Design Tips (above) to avoid some common mistakes when writing survey questions.