Survey Guidance

To assist faculty, staff, and students in their research and data collection here at Wright State University, Wright State has purchased a contract with Qualtrics software to provide free online survey software to all current Wright State faculty, staff, and students.  To ensure that faculty, staff, and students effectively use the tool to their best advantage, the following policy is set in place:

  1. All use of Qualtrics software, distribution of surveys, and university computers will be in compliance with University Policy.
  2. All research conducted will comply with the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
  3. All research conducted on human subjects must seek Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval with the following exceptions:

    Note: If in doubt, please view the Institutional Review Board (IRB’s) webpage.

    • Data collection for internal department or other University administrative purposes (i.e. course evaluations and employee and student satisfaction surveys).
    • Surveys issued or conducted by University personnel for the intent of improving services and programs of the University or for developing new services or programs for students, employees or alumni.
    • Informational gathering interviews or surveys that focus on University processes, services or policies (i.e. quality improvement and quality assurance surveys) unless clear intent is for generalizable knowledge.
    • University evaluations that are conducted under independent contract for an external agency for internal purposes only (i.e. personnel studies, customer satisfaction surveys, cost-benefit analyses, program enrollment, constituent demographics and outcome analyses).
    • Course-related activities or assignments for educational teaching purposes that are part of the course and the information collected is not disseminated for use outside the classroom (i.e. labs, projects and class exercises and assignments). The assignment can include a presentation to the class, but the data must be destroyed at the end of the project.
  4. Faculty, staff, and students will each receive limited amounts of surveys that can be conducted each semester.  Once the limit is reached, the faculty, staff or student may appeal (in writing) for more surveys.
  5. Upon the completion of a university-wide survey (non-proprietary), it is requested that a copy of the final report, the survey instrument, and raw frequencies for each question be supplied to The Office of Institutional Research for the purposes of uploading electronically for others to review and use.
  6. University-wide surveys are surveys that are administered to  any groups of students over 2,000, such as NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement) and SSI (Student Satisfaction Inventory).