Last updated on July 27, 2022
How do your faculty and students conduct their research? What roadblocks hinder their success in teaching and learning? What services do they expect from their library? And how have their practices and perspectives shifted in light of massive disruptions to higher education over the last year?
Our local surveys provide critical information on how faculty, graduate and professional students, and undergraduate students approach their work, discover resources, and perceive the library. The surveys help libraries better understand the communities they serve and inform their strategic decision making.
Libraries use their results to:
- Invest in technical infrastructure and staff to support data curation and publishing
- Enhance the discovery of essential resources
- Reshape their support for the first-year experience, international students, students struggling with basic needs, and student retention
- Change collecting and de-accessioning policies
- Advocate for resources at the institutional level
- Shape new learning spaces for students
- Collaborate on cross-institutional initiatives
- Identify particular groups that need new, additional, or differentiated support and outreach
Contact us and we will:
- Send you our prospectus about the local surveys program
- Host a webinar or discussion about the program with key stakeholders in your library
- Share the questionnaires for you to review
What the surveys cover
Each survey includes a core questionnaire tailored to the population you choose to survey. This provides for easy comparability between institutions should you wish to share your results with peers. For the local faculty survey, institutions will be able to compare results directly with our US Faculty Survey 2021 findings.
You can also choose additional modules from the menu below or work with us to create your own.
The local faculty survey
The local faculty survey instrument is aligned with our US Faculty Survey which has been fielded on a triennial basis since 2000. With each cycle, we have refreshed the survey instrument to ensure it maintains its relevance. Our most recent cycle, fielded in fall 2021, tracked trends from previous survey cycles and also introduced new items and questions to keep up with areas of emerging importance. Some of the new areas of coverage include questions on instructional support, equitable and holistic teaching practices, perspectives on scholarly outputs and open access models, and capacity and evaluation.
Faculty surveys
Core questionnaire
- Discovery and access
- Research practices
- Scholarly communication
- Teaching practices and student skills
- The role of the library
Optional modules
- Graduate instruction
- Library market research
- Library space planning
- Material types and formats
- Online learning
- Research topics and practices
- Scholarly societies
- Serving clinicians and health scientists
- Serving scientists and STEM-field researchers
- Undergraduate instruction
Graduate/professional student surveys
Core questionnaire
- Academics, coursework, and information practices
- The role of the library
- Library space planning
Optional modules
- Basic needs
- Career goals
- Higher education objectives
- International student experiences
- Research practices
- STEM research practices
- Teaching practices
Undergraduate surveys
Core questionnaire
- Academics, coursework, and information practices
- The role of the library
- Library space planning
Optional modules
- Basic needs
- Career goals
- Extra- and co-curricular activities
- Higher education objectives
- Research practices
Survey fees and services
As part of the local surveys service, we provide:
- Detailed implementation guidelines, including an onboarding webinar that outlines the process for fielding the surveys successfully
- Guidance on best practices for the selection and configuration of optional modules and modifications to demographic questions
- A hosted survey platform
- Ithaka S+R can send all invitation and reminder emails on your behalf
- The survey is branded with your institution’s name, logo, and institutional colors
- Invitation and reminder message templates can be customized to suit your institution and be signed by your designee
- Survey monitoring, including weekly updates and guidance on how to boost response rates, increase awareness of the surveys at your institution, and determine when to close the survey
- The full survey results
- A non-analytical graphical and tabular report of your aggregate findings
- The underlying survey dataset
- Strategies that other participants have employed to incorporate the survey results into their campus communications and strategic plans
- For the local faculty survey–an accompanying report of findings from the US Faculty Survey 2021 specific to your Carnegie classification
Fees
Our survey fees are based on the Carnegie Classification System. For institutions outside the US, we will determine with you which of these categories is the most appropriate. Institutions interested in running more than one survey during the same semester are eligible for a discount.
| Baccalaureate/ Associates | Masters | Doctoral: Moderate & Higher Research | Doctoral: Highest Research | |
| Fee | $5,000 | $7,000 | $7,500 | $8,000 |
- The fee for two surveys is 1.5x the price of one survey
- The fee for three surveys is 1.75x the price of one survey
Please note that the above fees assume a survey population of 15,000 invitees or less. There is a supplemental charge for inviting a greater number.
Additional services
Maximize your survey’s impact. After the survey is completed, we can provide additional services to help put your results to greater use:
Stratification
We can create crosstabs that present findings by demographic characteristics such as by departmental affiliation, experience level, or field/major, allowing you to dig into sub-group analyses.
Analysis
Working with your leadership, and based on your current strategic plans, we can analyze your findings for your specific institutional context. This can include selected stratifications, correlations, and comparisons to national findings. We can provide:
- A 10-15 page analytical memo
- On-site or virtual meetings, presentations, and/or workshops on the survey findings for librarians, faculty members, or senior leadership