Institutional Research, Analytics, and Reporting

Survey Policies and Procedures

Institutional Research, Analytics, and Reporting (IRAR) is responsible for managing electronic surveys of the campus community, this includes students, staff, and faculty. Our goal is to prevent survey fatigue through coordinated sampling methods; protect confidentiality through standards of practice, and ensure that the data collected is reliable, valid, and used to inform decision-making.

Humboldt academic departments, committees, task forces, and administrative units can request IRAR to provide assistance in the development, administration, and design of surveys.

IRAR does not supersede the policies and procedures of Humboldt's Institutional Review Board (IRB). Researchers are still responsible for obtaining the required IRB exemptions or permissions before implementing any survey. IRAR will provide the Humboldt IRB with the sample size authorized for the survey. IRAR may also notify the researcher/requester that an IRB review will be required before beginning work on the survey project. Information about human subjects’ research and the IRB process can be found on the IRB website at irb.humboldt.edu.

Survey Calendar

The IRAR Official Survey Calendar is updated as new surveys are added.

Survey Request Form

Survey Approval Process for HSU-Affiliated Researchers

Individuals and offices associated with Humboldt wishing to conduct survey research should review the survey calendar before submitting a Survey Request Form electronically. IRAR will review the survey proposal and respond within 3 business days of the date it is received.

Requests requiring samples of more than 300 students or any complete subset (e.g., all freshmen, all sophomores, etc.) of all students, faculty, or staff should be submitted for consideration at least three months prior to the proposed administration.

Course assignments that involve surveying students only within that class or a small subset do not need to be approved by IRAR. However, any use of email or mailing addresses, except within that class, requires IRAR approval.

Survey Approval Process for Non-HSU-Affiliated Researchers

Humboldt Information Technology Services provides Gmail accounts to all students and employees. The university uses those accounts for official university communication such as advising appointments, billing notices, and emergency information. In providing this service, Humboldt requires that our campus community adhere to the Gmail program policies, which include the request that users exercise judgment when sending an email to a large number of recipients, even if the recipients elected to receive emails from them in the past. Such emails can lead to users marking them as spam, which increases the likelihood that future messages sent from the same address will be classified as spam by our anti-abuse systems.

While we value research endeavors by non-HSU-affiliated researchers, we owe it to our community to limit communication competing with or causing issues with course information, instructors’ emails, and official university communications.