Overall
To take collective action that improves the climate on our campuses and in individual units, we must identify areas for improvement. The idea to conduct a university climate survey originated from interested students, faculty and staff who believed the survey data would be useful for planning and guiding actions to improve the climate at the University of Washington’s campuses in Bothell, Seattle and Tacoma and at UW Medicine.
Additionally, the passage of Senate Bill 5227 in June 2021 by the Washington State Legislature requires that our state’s public higher education institutions conduct campus climate assessments at least once every five years.
A campus climate survey examines the full range of experiences of students and employees (including staff, faculty and other academic personnel, and clinicians) related to living, learning and working on their respective UW campuses and at UW Medicine — experiences that go to the heart of whether they feel a sense of belonging and inclusion, and whether they’re able to thrive and succeed here.
Rankin Climate defines university climate as “the current attitudes, behaviors, standards and practices of employees and students of an institution.” The climate is influenced by personal experiences, perceptions and institutional efforts.
The UW conducted its last climate assessment during the 2019–20 academic year. In partnership with Rankin Climate (formerly Rankin and Associates), a tri-campus team of 31 students, faculty and staff collaborated on survey design, implementation and report delivery from January 2020–June 2020.
The University is committed to creating a welcoming, inclusive environment where students and employees can achieve their full potential. This is central to our mission as a public institution and research university dedicated to the free and open exchange of ideas. Only by having a positive, inclusive climate can we truly achieve our individual and institutional goals — from transformative educational experiences for students to a positive working environment for faculty and staff that enables them to be most effective, as well as a University-wide and Medical Center community that fosters well-being and a sense of belonging for all.
President Ana Mari Cauce, Chancellor Sheila Edwards Lange, Chancellor Kristin G. Esterberg and School of Medicine Dean and UW Medicine CEO Timothy Dellit have all committed to using the results of this survey to plan for — and take — effective actions to address critical issues that are identified over the course of this process, whether during initial development of the survey or the survey itself. For example, the results will inform development of the next UW Diversity Blueprint. The results will also help shape our work to prevent and respond to sex- and gender-based violence, harassment and discrimination as well as address discrimination based on race, color and national origin.
The Climate Survey Working Group (CSWG) is charged with conducting the University of Washington’s climate survey. Made up of 18 members representing all three campuses, the CSWG is responsible for guiding the survey, including determining the questions that will be asked.
The UW Office of Educational Assessment (OEA) will facilitate the survey. The CSWG will update the University community and UW leadership regularly about its progress. In partnership with OEA, the working group is responsible for the survey development and implementation.
Jillian Morn, Ph.D., is the lead researcher working directly with us on this project. Morn is an experienced research scientist with the Office of Educational Assessment, and she served a vital role in the UW’s 2019–20 campus climate assessment during the analysis and reporting phases.
This initiative will include four key phases. The first will involve survey development, from spring 2024 through winter 2025. The survey will be administered April 22 to May 22, 2025, followed by the reporting of results in fall quarter 2025. The final phase is leadership’s review and response, with action items identified in winter 2026.
Privacy
The campus-level reports will be added to the Campus Climate website and available to all members of the UW community. The reports will also be publicly available as a matter of transparency and as required by SB 5227.
The 2025 Campus Climate Survey will be conducted using an anonymous link to a Qualtrics survey. To protect the integrity of the project and ensure that only members of the UW community participate, you will be required to authenticate your identity using single sign-on (SSO) with your UW credentials to access the survey. Once validated, your NetID will be disconnected from your survey response using a one-way hash. This process uses encryption to scramble NetID data; there will be no way to identify who has responded to the survey from the data collected. Additionally, we have enabled “Anonymize Responses” in Qualtrics for this project. This feature permanently scrubs responses of identifying information before saving it, including respondent IP address and location data.
Your candid responses are critical to this project, so we’ve taken steps to make sure your survey participation is confidential. Individual survey responses will never be disclosed. Survey data will be kept on a secure server and will only be accessed by research scientists in the Office of Educational Assessment. Write-in responses will be reviewed and redacted for any unintentionally identifiable information to protect the identity of respondents. Data will be analyzed and reported only in aggregate back to the community. OEA will not report any group data for groups of fewer than five individuals because those may be small enough to compromise anonymity. Instead, OEA will combine groups or take other measures to eliminate any potential for demographic information to be identifiable.
Participation in the survey is completely voluntary. With the exception of two questions — primary role (e.g., student or employee) and campus or UW Medicine location — respondents may skip any question they’re not comfortable answering and can still submit the survey.
Development and administration of the survey
The survey is being developed by OEA research scientists with input and guidance from members of the Campus Climate Survey Working Group, as well as stakeholder and constituent groups from across the University and UW Medicine. The survey development process used the 2019–20 climate survey as a baseline, editing the content to better fit the current context and culture of the UW.
The climate survey is designed to be as inclusive as possible. It’s important that respondents can see themselves in response choices, rather than potentially feeling marginalized by having to select “other.” To make the survey as inclusive as possible, many demographic questions offer long lists of answer choices. While it isn’t feasible to include every possible choice to every question, the goal is to reduce the number of respondents who must choose “other.”
The Campus Climate Survey is not approved by nor covered under IRB protections. Because the purpose of the Campus Climate Survey is to inform internal improvements at the UW, not to advance scholarship related to campus climate in higher education, it does not require IRB approval.
The target participation in the survey is all students, faculty and staff on the UW campuses in Bothell, Seattle and Tacoma and at UW Medicine and clinics. Every response matters and is valuable in providing the most beneficial feedback and results. Our goal is a response rate of at least 30% across all populations. Additionally, we aim for at least a 30% response rate for each location (UW campuses in Bothell, Seattle and Tacoma and UW Medicine).
Nearly all students, staff, faculty and other academic personnel, and clinicians will be invited to participate in the survey. This includes individuals who are employed at UW hospitals and clinics.
The survey will be administered to all undergraduate, graduate and professional students, and all UW employees (including staff, faculty and other academic personnel, and UW Medicine clinicians and staff).
Climate varies across institutions, campuses and clinical settings, so it’s important to maximize participation and opportunities to reach underserved populations. We’re not using random sampling because that method could result in not representing particular populations whose numbers are very small (e.g., American Indian/Alaska Native students). Sampling doesn’t align with the project goal of inclusiveness and the chance for all voices to be heard. In addition, randomized stratified sampling is not used because we don’t have population data on most identities; a sample approach could miss many groups.
Reporting results
The UW Office of Educational Assessment (OEA) 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. The Climate Survey Working Group will review draft reports prior to OEA sharing with each campus community.