Professors Thomas Pavkov and Cathy Gillotti, co-investigators of the PUC Campus Climate Assessment Survey, detailed assurances of the confidentiality and anonymity of the survey process in a message sent to all faculty and staff members of Purdue University Calumet.

While concerns related to the confidentiality and anonymity of participant responses had to pass the stringent muster of the Institutional Review Board of Purdue University prior to the approval of the survey instrument, for several weeks beforehand the Campus Climate Assessment Project Team had strategized how best to alert potential participants to these safeguards. The purposeful wording of hard-copy letters delivered to each faculty and staff member, followed up by email to each of these potential participants, was aimed to emphasize the measures being taken to ensure response confidentiality and anonymity –

     1. the parameters of the VOXCO survey software as used in the Campus Climate Assessment Survey create randomized monitoring information of respondents to be practically untraceable to individual respondents;

    2. once obtained, the responses are handled only by the four Project Team members;

    3. upon completion of the final analysis of data, all responses will be irretrievably purged and destroyed;

    4. when information obtained from response data is analyzed and reported, it is done so only in the aggregate — that is, no individual responses are identified or singled out; data is reported out only in terms of gathered response data; and,

    5. should, for any reason, a group of responses be able to be attributed to an identifiable group (or form an identifiable group), data will only be reported if that group has at least 8 or more members. In other words, if fewer than 8 responses come from what might be regarded as an identifiable group, none of that data whatsoever will be reported out in order to prevent even the possibility of individual respondent identification.

Given the assurances and continuing attention by Project Team members to matters of confidentiality and anonymity throughout this study, it is hoped that every faculty and staff member will feel confident and uninhibited as they add their voices to this important project. To feel otherwise would itself be a significant finding that this Campus Climate Assessment Study would wish to document.

If you as a staff or faculty member have any concerns about participating in this survey for reasons related to confidentiality or anonymity, please contact the Project Team at 219-989-3145, by email at campusclimate@calumet.purdue.edu, or by contacting Dr. Thomas Pavkov (ext.2029) or Dr. Cathy Gillotti (ext. 2009) directly. Your voice needs to be heard.