What is the MiraCosta College Thoughts?
MiraCosta College serves a diverse community and is committed to celebrating the variety of our campus community. The district aims to create a campus culture where all members of our community can achieve success. Creating and maintaining a community culture that respects individual needs, backgrounds, abilities, and potential is critically important.
To make our institution the best it can be, MiraCosta College will be asking students, faculty, staff, and administrators to share their experiences through an assessment called: Thoughts?
What’s the purpose of this survey?
First, we want to improve the environment for learning and working at the college,
AND…
Second, to understand the current attitudes, behaviors, and standards of employees
and students. We will also want to know your concerns about access for, inclusion
of, and level of respect for individual and group needs, abilities, and potential.
What is the campus experience assessment?
Dr. Susan Rankin of Rankin & Associates Consulting, who is serving as the outside consultant for MiraCosta College campus experience assessment, defines the project as, "the current attitudes, behaviors, standards, and practices of employees and students of an institution." The climate is often shaped through personal experiences, perceptions, and institutional efforts.
Why is a positive climate important?
Dr. Rankin's research maintains that positive personal experiences with a campus experience and positive perceptions of campus experience for staff and students generally equate to successful outcomes. Example successful outcomes include positive educational experiences and healthy identity development for students, productivity and sense of value for faculty and staff, and overall well-being for all.
Why is MiraCosta College conducting a campus experience assessment?
The idea to conduct a campus experience assessment originated from interested students, faculty and staff who believed data from such an assessment might be useful in planning for the future and improving the climate at MiraCosta College.
Who will be conducting the assessment?
The Campus Experience Working Group is charged with conducting MiraCosta College's assessment. After a review of potential vendors, the committee selected Rankin & Associates Consulting to conduct the assessment and analysis. Rankin & Associates reports directly to the committee. Although the Working Group will regularly update MiraCosta College about its progress, the committee—in consultation with Rankin & Associates—is solely responsible for the development, implementation and interpretation of the assessment and its results. Dr. Susan Rankin (Rankin & Associates Consulting) is the consultant working directly with us on this project.
Dr. Rankin is an emeritus faculty member of Education Policy Studies and College Student Affairs at The Pennsylvania State University and a senior research associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education. She has extensive experience in institutional climate assessment and institutional climate transformation based on data-driven action and strategic planning. Dr. Rankin has conducted multi-location institutional climate studies at more than 190 institutions across the country. She developed and utilizes the Transformational Tapestry model as a research design for campus climate studies. The model is a “comprehensive, five-phase strategic model of assessment, planning and intervention. The model is designed to assist campus communities in conducting inclusive assessments of their institutional climate to better understand the challenges facing their respective communities' (Rankin & Reason, 2008).
Why was a non-MiraCosta College researcher selected for the project?
In reviewing efforts by other colleges to conduct comprehensive climate studies, several best practices were identified. One was the need for external expertise in assessment administration. The administration of an assessment relating to a very sensitive subject like campus culture is likely to yield higher response rates and provide more credible findings if led by an independent, outside agency. Members of a college community may feel particularly inhibited to respond honestly to an assessment administered by their own institution for fear of retaliation.
How were the questions developed?
The consultant has administered cultural assessments to more than 190 institutions across the nation and developed a repository of tested questions. To assist in contextualizing the assessment for MiraCosta College, and to capitalize on the many assessment efforts already undertaken, the Working Group was formed. The committee is responsible for developing the consultations. The team will review selected assessment questions from the consultant's tested collection and will also include MiraCosta College-specific questions which will be informed by the focus group results.
Why do some demographic questions contain a very large number of response options?
It is important in campus experience research for assessment participants to "see" themselves in response choices to prevent "othering" an individual or an individual's characteristics. Some researchers maintain that assigning someone to the status of "other" is a form of marginalization and should be minimized, particularly in campus climate research which has an intended purpose of inclusiveness. Along these lines, assessment respondents will see a long list of possible choices for many demographic questions. However, it is reasonably impossible to include every possible choice to every question, but the goal is to reduce the number of respondents who must choose "other."
What will be done with data from the results?
Although the committee believes the assessment process itself is informative, we have sought and received a commitment from the senior leaders that data will be used to plan for an improved experience for faculty, staff, and students at MiraCosta College.
What is the response rate goal?
The target participation in the assessment is all students, faculty, and staff at MiraCosta College. Every response matters and is valuable in providing the most beneficial feedback and results.
How is a respondent's confidentiality protected?
Confidentiality is vital to the success of campus climate research; particularly as sensitive and personal topics are discussed. While the assessment cannot guarantee complete confidentiality because of the nature of multiple demographic questions, the consultant will take multiple precautionary measures to enhance individual confidentiality and the de-identification of data. No data already protected through regulation or policy (e.g., Social Security number, campus identification number, medical information) is obtained through the assessment. In the event of any publication or presentation resulting from the assessment, no personally identifiable information will be shared.
Confidentiality in participating will be maintained to the highest degree permitted by the technology used (e.g., IP addresses will be stripped when the assessment is submitted). No guarantees can be made regarding the interception of data sent via the Internet by any third parties; however, to avoid interception of data, the assessment is run on a firewalled web server with forced 256-bit SSL security. In addition, the consultant and college will not report any group data for groups of fewer than five individuals, because those "small cell sizes" may be small enough to compromise confidentiality. Instead, the consultant and the college will combine the groups or take other measures to eliminate any potential for demographic information to be identifiable. Additionally, any comments submitted in response to the assessment will be separated at the time of submission to the consultant so they are not attributed to any individual demographic characteristics. Identifiable information submitted in qualitative comments will be redacted and the college will only receive these redacted comments.
Participation in the assessment is completely voluntary, and participants do not have to answer any question and can skip any other questions they consider to be uncomfortable. Paper and pencil assessments are also available and will be sent directly to the consultant.
Information in the introductory section of the assessment will describe the manner in which confidentiality will be guaranteed, and additional communication to participants will provide expanded information on the nature of confidentiality, possible threats to confidentiality and procedures developed to ensure de-identification of data.
What will be included in the final summary reports?
The consultant will provide a final report that will include: an executive summary; a report narrative of the findings based on cross tabulations selected by the consultant; frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations of quantitative data; and content analysis of the textual data. The reports provide high-level summaries of the findings and will identify themes found in the data. Generalizations for populations are limited to those groups or subgroups with response rates of at least 30%. The committee will review draft reports and provide feedback to the consultant prior to public release.
What protections are in place for storage of sensitive data, including for future secondary use?
MiraCosta College has worked with the consultant to develop a research data security description and protocol, which includes specific information on data encryption, the handling of personally identifiable information, physical security and a protocol for handling unlikely breaches of data security. The data from online participants will be submitted to a secure server hosted by the consultant. The assessment is run on a firewalled web server with forced 256-bit SSL security and is stored on a SQL database that can only be accessed locally. The server itself may only be accessed using encrypted SSH connections originating from the local network. Rankin & Associates Consulting project coordinator Dr. Susan Rankin will have access to the raw data along with several Rankin & Associates data analysts. All Rankin & Associates analysts have CITI (Human Subjects) training and approval and have worked on similar projects for other institutions. The web server runs with the SE-Linux security extensions (that were developed by the NSA). The server is also in RAID to highly reduce the chance of any data loss due to hardware failure. The server performs a nightly security audit from data acquired via the system logs and notifies the administrators. The number of system administrators will be limited and each will have had required background checks.
The consultant has conducted more than 190 institutional assessments and maintains an aggregate merged database. The data from MiraCosta College project will be merged with all other existing climate data stored indefinitely on the consultant’s secure server. No institutional identifiers are included in the full merged data set held by the consultant. The raw unit-level data with institutional identifiers is kept on the server for six months and then destroyed. The paper and pencil assessments are returned to the consultant directly and kept in a locked file drawer in a locked office. The consultant destroys the paper and pencil responses after they are merged with the online data. The consultant will notify the committee chairs of any breach or suspected breach of data security of the consultant's server.
The consultant will provide the primary investigator with a data file at the completion of the project.
Why is this a population assessment and not a sample assessment?
The assessment will be administered to all students at MiraCosta College. Climate exists in micro-climates, so creating opportunities to maximize participation is important as well as maximizing opportunities to reach minority populations. Along these lines, the consultant has recommended not using random sampling as we may “miss” particular populations where numbers are very small (e.g., Native American students). Since one goal of the project is inclusiveness and allowing invisible "voices" to be heard, this sampling technique is not used. In addition, randomized stratified sampling is not used because we do not have population data on most identities. For example, MiraCosta College collects population data on gender and race/ethnicity, but not on disability status or sexual orientation. A sample approach could miss many groups.
What is the timeline?
This initiative will include five primary phases. The first will involve focus groups (spring 2019), assessment development (spring/summer 2019), assessment implementation that will seek input from all students, faculty, and staff at MiraCosta College (fall 2019), and reporting of results (fall 2020).
