The Kardia Group

How are we doing? Are our faculty happy? Our students? Are we offering the right courses, heading in the right direction, making good decisions? Are there discrepancies in satisfaction or success related to gender, race/ethnicity, or other social identity characteristics? Do people in this department feel invested in being here, as if their presence makes a difference? Would they recommend our department to others?

When a department is concerned about climate, often one of the first actions taken is to survey some or all of these groups: faculty, staff, researchers and postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students. Once that is complete, though, faculty are faced with the interpretation of results, and the question of what actions to take based on that. Sometimes results are, or appear, unclear, contradictory, counter-intuitive; sometimes they do not seem to answer the "real" question. And yet, they always provide information that can lead to further insights into departmental climate and dynamics.

Here's a brief summary of how survey data can inform departmental climate change.

Survey data raises questions and promotes discussions; it does not provide quick answers
No survey is going to hand you "the answer" - on a silver platter or otherwise. However, a well-designed survey that engages a sufficient segment of the survey population will provide information that stimulates further questions, individual and institutional reflection, conversation, and change.

Where climate is concerned, much depends on the individual's perception and experience, which is related to personal and position factors (race, gender, rank, etc.) as well as institutional culture, departmental structure, and more. Climate data can illuminate where patterns that relate to these factors exist (or don't exist, which can also be illuminating), revealing tensions and unintended outcomes, areas of success, and the need for small refinements that can be too complex to see (or for all to see equally) amidst the day-to-day interactions of the department.

Data is necessarily partial (being limited only to the questions that were asked)
It is simply not possible to gather all the relevant data with a survey. However, this is not so very different from any research: questions must be well-defined and limited, due to constraints including time, money, and relevance. Discussing what is in the data can bring to light what's missing, so that it may then be brought into the discussion through other mechanisms.

As with any research, a quick glance at survey results will give you a limited, and sometimes misleading, view of the data
Departmental climate is created through a complex interplay of factors which survey questions can only begin to reveal. An accurate understanding of student and faculty experience and of departmental dynamics requires more than a cursory glance at the results. The useful questions and meaningful discussion that surveys make possible can only be accessed through a thorough data analysis.

What needs attention should be measured by the standards you set for yourself, not in looking for utter failings
The proportion of survey respondents indicating they have experienced (for example) sexual harassment or disparaging racial remarks may appear quite low. Suppose, for example, only 10% of people in the department have experienced this. The question is, what is an acceptable level of these kinds of experiences for the kind of department you want to be? If it's low enough that it doesn't trigger administrative intervention, is that an acceptable level? Is "well, we're better than X department on Y campus, where a quarter of the women left last year" an acceptable level? Is it acceptable for any members of your department to have experienced this?

Climate surveys are intended to produce a more nuanced, participatory, and comprehensive understanding of your department, not a narrowed or "politically correct" set of rules or interpretations
Effective climate surveys bring everyone into the conversation rather than, for example, being used to prove to one group that another group is right, or to coerce the department to adopt particular policies etc. Climate data can open discussion about topics which currently function only as rumors, address differences between departmental factions, reveal systemic difficulties caused by unclear policies and procedures, help to resolve long-standing frustrations, identify areas where the department is exemplary, and so on. Bringing into the conversation things which have been ignored, poorly understood, or denied makes it more possible for departments to more productively discuss the goals and challenges of the department as a whole.