UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Starting Oct. 4 and continuing through Oct. 31, Penn State faculty, staff, technical services employees, administrators, students, postdoctoral scholars and fellows will receive emails from an outside organization asking for their participation in the Penn State Values and Culture Survey. The confidential survey will take less than 20 minutes to complete, and is a follow up to a survey conducted in 2013.
"The findings of the 2013 survey were significant," said Regis Becker, director of the University Office of Ethics and Compliance. "We learned about the strong connection many employees and students have with Penn State, and used their feedback to form the foundation of the Penn State Values. But we also learned about issues involving fear of retaliation for reporting misconduct, and that some felt a lack of trust in the reporting process and available resources."
This new survey will allow University leadership to gauge progress, evaluate the programs implemented, and identify areas for further development.
The survey is being conducted by the Virginia-based Ethics Research Center (ERC), an independent, nonprofit organization and recognized leader in the field of organizational survey work. ERC will conduct the survey in a manner that protects the identities of all participants; responses will be aggregated and only summary data will be provided back to Penn State so that no individual within any unit can be identified. If there are less than 20 participants of any demographic group on a question, ERC will not report information on that question to Penn State. Responses for that group will be combined with others in order to protect the identities of participants.
Individuals who experience technical difficulties as they are taking the survey should contact the ERC directly by emailing ethicssurvey@ethics.org or calling 800-777-1285 on weekdays between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
“We’re very excited about the new survey,” said Timothy Balliett, University ethics officer. “We established a baseline with the previous survey, and now we’re looking to continue the conversation with the members of our Penn State community, to hear directly from them about how we’ve affected life at Penn State.”
The ERC will deliver an executive summary of the findings in spring 2018, and Becker said the document will be published at that time.
For more information about the survey, visit the FAQ at https://universityethics.psu.edu/values-culture-survey-faq.