Higher Education Survey participant information
The Higher Education Survey is concerned with how academics approach multi-tasking, specifically where research and teaching duties conflict. Academics are coming under increasing pressures to raise both research and teaching standards and this work is intended to help provide insights into sensible ways to facilitate these demands.
Key information
This study is being conducted by the University of Surrey as part of a major national research project, Delivering Better for Less: Improving Productivity and Motivation in Public Services.
The Higher Education Survey is concerned with how academics approach multi-tasking, specifically where research and teaching duties conflict. Academics are coming under increasing pressures to raise both research and teaching standards and this work is intended to help provide insights into sensible ways to facilitate these demands.
Academics at selected British universities, involved in both research and teaching, are being asked to participate in this survey. Your name was manually selected from the staff list available on your institution’s public domain website, and screened to ensure that, as far as possible, only academics who are involved in both teaching and research are approached. If you do not wish to take part, you can opt out of the survey by following the opt-out link at the end of the invitation e-mail.
You can also contact our project team using the e-mail address deliveringbetter@surrey.ac.uk to let us know that you do not wish to take part. We will then remove you from the contacts list at the earliest possible opportunity. You can request that your data be withdrawn up to one month after completing the survey and following your request all data already collected from you will be deleted.
By completing this survey you will be eligible for two prizes as follows:
- Prize of £500 for the best prediction of your colleague’s views
- Multiple prizes of up to £80 drawn at random for every 300 submissions received.
The wider benefits from completing this survey will come from publication and dissemination of the results of this study of how academics approach multi-tasking. Participants can request to be made aware of when the results of this study will become publicly available by emailing deliveringbetter@surrey.ac.uk.
There are no known disadvantages or risks from taking part. There is no obligation to complete the survey and an opt-out link has been provided in the invitation. Data provided will be handled securely for academic research purposes only.
The personal data required as part of this study is limited to the variables that will be controlled for in analysing the data. Email addresses will only be used subsequently for notifying financial prize winners. Once data is captured it will be identified by a unique key generated by the Qualtrics survey software employed such that it is anonymised for research reporting purposes. Any public reporting of results will be at aggregated levels protecting the anonymity of participants.
In respect of the data collected from you, Qualtrics gives assurances that data collected in the EU remains in the EU. We will also ensure that all the data we collect from you will be anonymized and the collected data points will not be linked to your identity. Research data will be stored securely for a minimum of 10 years and all project data will be held for at least 6 years in line with University of Surrey policy. All personal data will be handled in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.
This project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
If you experience any problems in accessing the survey link, please contact our project team at deliveringbetter@surrey.ac.uk.
The study has been reviewed and received a favourable Ethical Opinion (FEO) from the University of Surrey Ethics Committee. We have followed best practice in relation to the ethical issues involved in conducting a large scale web-based survey. In particular:
- Recipients of the survey are provided with full information on the nature of the research project of which the survey is a part
- Recipients of the survey are provided with full information on the funding sources for the research project, the institutional affiliation of the project team and the names of the principal investigators (Professor Graham Cookson, Dr Zahra Murad and Nigel Burnell) working on the project
- All potential respondents are informed about the voluntary nature of their participation in the survey and are offered the choice to opt out of any future correspondence. They are also informed that their responses will be kept in anonymised form and will only be used for academic research
- Whilst the survey is still active, the data are stored on a secure server. The data are password protected and can be accessed by members of the project team only
- Upon completion of the survey, all data will be kept in anonymised, secure and password protected form on the University of Surrey servers.
- The project team will respond to any query from respondents and potential respondents at the earliest possible opportunity.
Contact
If you have any further questions about this survey, please contact the project team at deliveringbetter@surrey.ac.uk.