The purpose of the survey clearinghouse is to make information about impending and on-going surveys available to the campus community to assure the most effective use of the Viterbo community’s time and resources.  All campus-wide surveys must be cleared through the survey clearinghouse.  “Campus-wide” refers to surveys administered to the faculty or employee population or to a significant segment of the student body (e.g. an entire class of undergraduate students, all graduate students, or all undergraduate students).  This policy does not pertain to department surveys of their majors or administrative surveys (e.g. scheduling, registration, planning, voting, or event evaluation).

This policy establishes a consistent procedure for managing campus surveys, for better coordination of survey schedules, reduced survey fatigue, improved response rates, improved use of existing and new data, and improved survey instruments.  The Office of Assessment and Institutional Research (OAIR) manages the survey clearinghouse. OAIR staff are also available for consultation on survey design and for administrative support of Qualtrics functionality.

Process for scheduling a survey at Viterbo University:

1. Consult with OAIR to determine if there is data available or a planned survey that will meet your survey needs.

2. Consult the Viterbo University survey calendar to select potential survey time frame(s).  Ideally only two surveys should be on the schedule at the same time, and course evaluations have priority.

3. Additional protocol for student researchers: 

      a) Work with your faculty sponsor or employee sponsor before applying for the clearinghouse; your sponsor will be asked to approve or deny survey distribution through the clearinghouse process.

      b) The primary way for students to distribute their survey is through VU Today.  Prepare the VU Today invitation and submit it with your survey clearinghouse application.  Approval will include arrangement with Communications for the survey invitation in VU Today.   

4. Develop the survey and define the survey population.

5. Obtain Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval or exemption after following the IRB decision tree.

6. Submit the survey clearing request at least two weeks prior to the desired start date for the survey.

CLICK HERE TO FILL OUT THE SURVEY CLEARINGHOUSE APPLICATION

To promote sharing of institutional information and avoid duplication of survey material, OAIR will maintain descriptions of recent surveys, which is available to the campus community on the Institutional Research SharePoint site by clicking here. 

Aggregated survey results may be available to researchers through OAIR.

Survey clearinghouse guidelines are posted on the OAIR web page and will be included in VU Today at the beginning of fall and spring terms.