Campus Climate Frequently Asked Questions

Rankin & Associates Consulting, which is serving as the outside consultant for Pomona College climate survey, defines campus climate as, “the current attitudes, behaviors, standards and practices of employees and students of an institution.” The climate is often shaped through personal experiences, perceptions and institutional efforts.

Research conducted by Sue Rankin, a senior research associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education and emeritus faculty of education in the College Student Affairs Program at The Pennsylvania State University, maintains that positive personal experiences with campus climate and positive perceptions of campus climate generally equate to successful outcomes. Example successful outcomes include positive educational experiences and healthy identity development for students, productivity and sense of value for faculty and staff and overall well-being for all.

The Climate Survey Working Group believes data from such a survey might be useful in planning for the future and improving the climate at Pomona College.

The Climate Survey Working Group (CSWG) is made up of students, faculty and staff. The CSWG represents a cross-section of the campus. Student members applied over the summer of 2019 and were chosen by members of the President's Advisory Committee on Diversity (PACD) and by the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) president. 

The committee partnered with Rankin & Associates Consulting to help carry out the project. The committee—in consultation with Rankin & Associates—is responsible for the development, implementation and interpretation of the survey and its results. The CSWG will regularly update our community about its progress.

The consultant directly working with us on this project is Sue Rankin, an emeritus faculty member of education policy studies and college student affairs at The Pennsylvania State University and a senior research associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education. She has extensive experience in institutional climate assessment and institutional climate transformation based on data-driven action and strategic planning.

Rankin has conducted multi-location institutional climate studies at more than 200 institutions across the country. She developed and utilizes the Transformational Tapestry model, a “comprehensive, five-phase strategic model of assessment, planning and intervention.” The model is designed to assist campus communities in conducting inclusive assessments of their institutional climate to better understand the challenges facing their respective communities.” (Rankin & Reason, 2008.)

In reviewing efforts by other universities to conduct comprehensive climate studies, several best practices were identified. One was the need for external expertise in survey administration. The administration of a survey relating to a very sensitive subject like campus climate is likely to yield higher response rates and provide more credible findings if led by an independent, outside agency. Members of a college community may feel particularly inhibited to respond honestly to a survey administered by their own institution for fear of retaliation.

This initiative includes five primary phases. The first involves planning and focus groups  (fall 2019), survey development (fall 2019), survey implementation that will seek input from all students, faculty and staff at Pomona College (spring 2020), reporting of results (fall 2020) and developing action steps (fall 2020).

The primary investigator from Pomona College for the IRB process is Jennifer Rachford, director of Office of Institutional Research at Pomona College. An IRB application was submitted for the project. Once the project was approved, the survey was administered.

The committee expects findings from the process will result in actions to improve climate that can both happen quickly, as well as those that will need to be addressed through longer-term planning. The last phase of the project, in fall 2020, will be to develop action steps in consultation with Rankin & Associates.

The target participation in the survey is all students, faculty and staff at Pomona College. Every response matters and is valuable in providing the most beneficial feedback and results.

Confidentiality is vital to the success of campus climate research; particularly as sensitive and personal topics are discussed. While the survey cannot guarantee complete confidentiality because of the nature of multiple demographic questions, the consultant will take multiple precautionary measures to enhance individual confidentiality and the de-identification of data. No data already protected through regulation or policy (e.g., Social Security number, campus identification number, medical information) is obtained through the survey. In the event of any publication or presentation resulting from the assessment, no personally identifiable information will be shared.

Confidentiality in participating will be maintained to the highest degree permitted by the technology used (e.g., IP addresses will be stripped when the survey is submitted). No guarantees can be made regarding the interception of data sent via the Internet by any third parties; however, to avoid interception of data, the survey is run on a firewalled web server with forced 256-bit SSL security. In addition, the consultant and college will not report any group data for groups of fewer than five individuals, because those “small cell sizes” may be small enough to compromise confidentiality. Instead, the consultant and the college will combine the groups or take other measures to eliminate any potential for demographic information to be identifiable. Additionally, any comments submitted in response to the survey will be separated at the time of submission to the consultant so they are not attributed to any individual demographic characteristics. Identifiable information submitted in qualitative comments will be redacted and the college will only receive these redacted comments.

Participation in the survey is completely voluntary, and participants do not have to answer any question and can skip any other questions they consider to be uncomfortable. Paper and pencil surveys are also available and will be sent directly to the consultant.

Information in the introductory section of the survey will describe the manner in which confidentiality will be guaranteed, and additional communication to participants will provide expanded information on the nature of confidentiality, possible threats to confidentiality and procedures developed to ensure de-identification of data.

The consultant will provide a final report that will include: an executive summary; a report narrative of the findings based on cross tabulations selected by the consultant; frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations of quantitative data; and content analysis of the textual data. The reports provide high-level summaries of the findings and will identify themes found in the data. Generalizations for populations are limited to those groups or subgroups with response rates of at least 30 percent. The committee will review draft reports and provide feedback to the consultant prior to public release.

Pomona College will work with the consultant to develop 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 consultant has conducted more than 200 institutional surveys and maintains an aggregate merged database. The data from the Pomona College 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.

Rankin & Associates will collect and prepare the raw data files devoid of any identifiers and they will provide the primary investigator with a data file at the completion of the project. Specific protocols governing access to and use of the data file will be established and agreed to by Pomona College.

The survey was administered to all students, staff and faculty at Pomona College. Climate exists in micro-climates, so creating opportunities to maximize participation is important as well as maximizing opportunities to reach minority populations. Along these lines, the consultant has recommended not using random sampling as we may “miss” particular populations where numbers are very small (e.g., Native American students). Since one goal of the project is inclusiveness and allowing invisible “voices” to be heard, this sampling technique is not used. In addition, randomized stratified sampling is not used because we do not have population data on most identities. For example, Pomona College collects population data on gender and race/ethnicity, but not on disability status or sexual orientation. A sample approach could miss many groups.