Privacy and the Duke Libraries student survey
The Duke Libraries biennial user satisfaction survey is confidential but not anonymous. Your responses will be kept strictly confidential, analyzed collectively, and reported only in the aggregate. Once the survey has closed and the raffle is complete, identifiers including name, netID, and email address are deleted prior to analysis to protect respondents’ confidentiality. Survey responses remain associated with demographics information such as school and race.
Library staff send a survey invitation to a representative subset (i.e., a sample) of all students through direct emails. Library staff acquire the sample from Duke’s Institutional Research Office (IR). The sample includes a list of students with demographic information such as school, academic class, and race so library staff can analyze aggregate survey data by demographic groups. The sample is stored on Duke’s secure drives and uploaded to Qualtrics Survey Software, which is licensed by Duke University. Survey responses within Qualtrics are associated with personal information while the survey is running so library staff can send reminder emails to students who have not yet completed the survey and because library staff need survey respondents’ identifying information in order to select a raffle winner. Only one library staff member is authorized to access survey data linked to names, emails, and netIDs before the identifying data is deleted.
The Libraries also invite students who are not part of the sample to complete the survey. Students completing the survey in this way must authenticate their identity as a Duke-affiliate using Shibboleth, Duke’s SSO-authentication service. When they do so, their netID is recorded along with their responses. When the survey closes, the netID is used to remove duplicate responses from students who took the survey more than once and to send a list of netIDs to IR. IR provides the same demographics data for these respondents as it does for the students in the sample. After this data is combined with data from survey respondents in the sample, identifiers such as name, netID, and email address are deleted.
Participation in the survey is completely voluntary, and it will not be part of any academic, medical, employment, or disciplinary record. If you choose to participate, you may skip any question you do not feel comfortable answering or you may stop the survey at any time.
Your responses will be kept strictly confidential, analyzed collectively, and reported ONLY in the aggregate. Individual response data will never be shared, printed or published; only three researchers in the Institutional Research Office will have access to it. The unique URL for your survey embeds your organizational unit, allows you to leave the survey and come back to it later, and enables us to avoid sending you reminders to complete a survey you’ve already finished. We delete this link prior to analysis to protect your confidentiality.
The survey results will be used to track the effectiveness of current and planned programmatic and policy changes designed to help Duke become a more just and equitable community. The data you provide is completely confidential: The link to the survey provided below is your personalized URL, and it will be used only for the survey administration. Once the survey administration is completed, all the identifiable information, such as the personalized URL and email address, will be removed from the response file before the data analysis begins.
All analyses and reports will be conducted at levels of aggregation that prevent individual identification. Steps taken in this regard include reporting results of analyses only for groups of five or more. The data file will reside on a secure server in the Provost’s Office, and all analyses will be conducted by our Office of Institutional Research. Also, only the researchers will have access to the data file.
We anticipate no individual risks or benefits to you. Participation in the survey is completely voluntary, and you may answer as few or as many questions as you wish. The survey should take 15-20 minutes to complete. Also, the survey does not need to be completed in one session—i.e., you may complete a portion, then return later to finish the remainder of the survey.
Survey Consent Form
This survey will take you up to 30 minutes to complete.
You have been invited to participate in a voluntary survey designed to gather responses on your awareness of, participation in, research practices, scholarly objectives, and resource needs in digital humanities research as an administrator, faculty member, academic staff, and/or student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This survey is done over the Internet using text entry, checkboxes, and radio buttons. You agree to permit the Responsible Project Investigator and Investigators to obtain, use and disclose the information provided as described below. There are no known risks of participating in this study beyond those experienced in everyday, ordinary life.
CONDITIONS AND STIPULATIONS:
1. You understand that all gathered information is anonymous and you will not be personally identified in any reports.
2. You understand that all data generated from the survey will be accessed by the Responsible Project Investigator and Investigators.
3. You agree to complete the survey for research purposes, and understand that the answers derived from this survey may be made available for the general public in the form of public presentations, journal articles, and/or in books.
4. You understand that your study-related information will not always be confidential. In general, we will not tell anyone any information about you. When this research is discussed or published, no one will know that you were in the study. However, laws and university rules might require us to disclose data collected from you. For example, if required by laws or University Policy, study information may be seen or copied by the following people or groups:
5. Your decision to participate or decline participation in this study is completely voluntary and you have the right to terminate your participation at any time without penalty. If you do not wish to complete this survey, you can just close your web browser.
6. You understand that the online survey involves questions about your interest in and experiences with digital scholarship research and teaching at the University of Illinois.
7. You can contact the Responsible Project Investigator [INSERT CONTACT INFORMATION] at any time you have questions about the research survey and your rights as a participant in the survey. You are aware that your consent will not directly benefit you, but will provide data for this research project.
8. If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant in the study, you can contact the University of Illinois Institutional Review Board at 217-333-2670 or via email at irb@illinois.edu. The Institutional Review Board is the office at the University of Illinois responsible for protecting the rights of human subjects involved in studies conducted by University of Illinois researchers.
If you would like a copy of the consent form for your records, please print it now.
I have read and understand the above consent form, I certify that I am 18 years old or older, and, by clicking the “Yes” radio button to enter the survey, I freely acknowledge my rights as a voluntary research participant as outlined above and I provide consent to the responsible project investigator to use my information in this project.
__Yes
__No (If no, please close your browser now)
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