Climate Survey Instrument

Ruth Chang offers this:

If anyone is looking for a template climate survey for their department, the University of Michigan has one for all departments, devised by social scientists who worked with graduate student focus groups. (Thanks to Abby Stewart for sharing this). Here it is.

People who have experience running these surveys strongly recommend that strict guidelines for anonymity and confidentiality should be advertised and followed. For example, if the survey is conducted electronically, online survey software should be used to collect survey answers rather than email; a non-departmental, neutral third party should be responsible for reviewing, summarizing, and anonymizing the raw data; none of the raw data should be viewed by anyone in the department; none of the raw data should ever be made public; if the graduate population is small or if there are only a small number of members of underrepresented groups, the survey should not ask them to declare their underrepresented status so that no respondent can be identified by gender, race, etc.