The purpose of the Survey Guidelines and Best Practices document is to provide an overview of conducting survey projects from start to finish. The motivation for this work lies in the increasing need for surveys that are conducted to:
- Understand student and employee perceptions, experiences, and expectations.
- Measure outcomes.
- Support a research undertaking where BCIT students or employees are the survey participants.
The growing need to capture student and staff insights and feedback has unsurprisingly resulted in the increasing number of surveys conducted at BCIT and brought along some issues such as survey fatigue, reduced response rates, and potential risks of privacy breaches. Institutional Research and Planning Office was approached to develop the document given the experience with survey methodologies, instrument design, and analysis and reporting.
The sections of the Guidelines [PDF] are organized in a way that each section builds on material covered in preceding sections.
Section I and II [PDF] provide a general overview of the surveys conducted at BCIT, and the relevance and necessity of the Guidelines.
Section III [PDF] introduces the reader to the fundamental features of a typical survey cycle while providing a comprehensive outline.
Section IV [PDF] outlines the legitimate online survey tools hosting the survey data in Canada and the BCIT Research Ethics Board.
External resources and links to the related privacy laws, regulations, policies, procedures, and guidelines are available under Resources.
Coordination of survey administration is important in order to avoid survey fatigue and increase the survey response rates. An overview of BCIT surveys and survey timelines is available under BCIT Survey Calendar [PDF].