Your Voice @ UTAS

Why is the survey being done?

When will the survey be available to complete?

The survey will be available online from Monday 27 April 2009 to Friday 8 May 2009 inclusive.

How long will the survey take to complete?

The survey will take most people less than 30 minutes to complete.

How will the survey be completed?

You will be able to complete the survey online from the home page of the Your Voice @ UTAS website. For those staff members who encounter problems accessing the online survey, a paper copy may be requested by providing your university address by email to Your.Voice@utas.edu.au .  A paper survey will then be sent to you via the internal university mail.

How will the survey be structured?

The survey will involve a combination of agree/disagree questions (where you give a score on a rating scale) as well as a small number of open-ended questions (where you can give more detailed written feedback).

How should staff respond to work area survey questions if they work in multiple areas across UTAS?

In the survey there are a couple of questions in relation to work areas. The first relates to the Faculty, Institute or Division in which you work. There is then a more specific question about your work area within the Faculty, Institute or Division. For each question only one area can be recorded, so we recommend choosing the area in which you spend the majority of your work time.

Will the survey results be confidential?

Absolutely. We want honest responses so we’re taking several steps to ensure confidentiality. All survey responses will be analysed by Voice Project at Macquarie University. Online surveys will be completed at a secure website, and paper-based surveys will be sealed in envelopes by staff and sent unopened to Voice Project. Results will be reported by Voice Project only for groups of 10 or more people. At no point will anyone within UTAS be able to identify responses from individual employees. The survey will contain some demographic questions (such as age, gender, employment status, etc) but these questions are designed purely to enable analysis of differences in responses across different groups of people (e.g., to see if women have different opinions than men, or if academic staff have different opinions than general staff). Management will NOT have access to these demographic questions and the questions will NOT be used to identify individual people.

What will be done with the results?

Voice Project will report average group results to the Vice-Chancellor and the rest of the senior executive, showing results for UTAS as a whole, as well as the results for separate schools, sections, locations and subgroups within UTAS (results will be reported by Voice Project only for groups of 10 or more people.) Summary results will be published for all staff to access.  Management throughout UTAS will then communicate the results to all staff.

Who is the Voice Project?

Voice Project is a consulting and research company that specialises in delivering best practice surveys.  Their purpose is “improving organisations by giving people a voice”.  They have delivered employee surveys for over 130 clients including 20 universities.  Voice Project is based in the research park at Macquarie University.

Has the survey received ethics approval?

This study has been approved by the Tasmanian Social Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC).  If you have concerns or complaints about the conduct of this study you should contact the Executive Officer of the HREC (Tasmania) Network on (03) 6226 7479 or email human.ethics@utas.edu.au .  The Executive Officer is the person nominated to receive complaints from research participants. You will need to quote HREC project number: H10521.
It is important that you understand that your involvement in this survey is voluntary. While we would be pleased to have you participate, we respect your right to decline. There will be no consequences to you if you decide not to participate. You may discontinue participation at any time, by exiting the survey.  Your completion and submission of the survey will indicate your consent to participate in this survey.