Queen's Student Experiences Survey FAQs

The survey will provide Queen’s University with information about students’ perceptions and experiences of diversity and inclusion and sexual violence.

The survey includes questions on the following themes:

• General campus climate, including feelings of safety and belonging
• Experiences with diversity and inclusion including community actions and attitudes, perceptions of connectedness and inclusivity, experiences with discrimination and harassment, and experiences with food and housing insecurity
• Perceptions of and experiences with sexual violence
• Knowledge of sexual violence supports, services and disclosure procedures
• Perceptions of consent
• Satisfaction with institutional responses to sexual violence
• Behaviour of bystanders
• Current attitudes regarding gender and sexual violence
• Relationship dynamics

We recognize that there are many demands on your time and we appreciate the time and attention you give this survey. The time of year was selected to not interfere with common school breaks or final exam schedules and other all student surveys being conducted across campus.

Queen’s plans to survey the student population on overall experiences of campus climate every 2 years.

Information from this survey will be critical to creating an inclusive campus environment, tailoring policies, and programming, and improving services and the campus response to discrimination and harassment. The data collected will be used to inform a publicly available, aggregated report that will reflect students’ views, feelings, and experiences. This report will be available Fall 2021.

The Queen’s Student Experiences Survey draws from the EAB Campus Climate Survey, an anonymous online instrument that assesses students’ perceptions of and experiences with diversity and inclusion and campus sexual violence. Through the survey data, institutions can better understand students’ perceptions and experiences, identify strengths and areas for improvement, and measure year-over-year progress on key initiatives. 

Since EAB launched the survey in 2015, the EAB Campus Climate Survey Instrument has been used by more than 80 unique institutions who have used the results to improve the campus experience and outcomes for students.  

The survey was developed using best practice recommendations from leading subject matter experts in diversity and inclusion, sexual violence, survey design, and available policy recommendations. Questions are time-bound and ask respondents to reflect on what has occurred within a specific period of time.

Yes. Student representatives from the AMS and SGPS were consulted on the survey content.

Yes. The survey will collect no personally identifiable information and student responses will be anonymous. IP addresses will also not be collected.

Students electing to receive a token of appreciation at the end of the survey will leave this survey and enter their contact information in a different, separate form. Contact information will be saved in a separate file from your survey responses.

The survey will collect no personally identifiable information and student responses will be anonymous.

If you choose to use a shared computer / device, please review these instructions regarding clearing a web browser cache.

To protect the identity of respondents, the following rules will apply regarding any reporting on the information received in the survey:

• No personal identifiable information will be collected with any of the responses, including IP Address
• No campus or other location, faculty, or clustering of programs, will be identified in the data file if there are not at least 10 responses for that group.
• No personal demographic information will be provided by campus, faculty or other location or program clustering in the data if there are not at least 10 respondents included in each response item (excluding ‘Not Applicable’ and ‘Don’t Know’ responses).

Survey data will be kept on Qualtrics, the university survey platform, which keeps the data on a secure and encrypted platform. The data will only be accessible by Institutional Research and Planning (IRP), Queen’s University, through a password protected login. All data downloaded from the system will be stored in an encrypted, password protected drive for subsequent analysis. Data will remain on the drive for the designated period before being removed or archived according to protocols.

Due to the anonymous nature of the survey, survey responses cannot be removed after they have been submitted. Survey responses will be reported in terms of groups (such as by Faculty) of students rather than as individual cases. No aggregate information will be released if fewer than 10 respondents are represented.

All registered Queen’s students (undergraduate and graduate) may participate in this survey. 

Students who participate in the survey will provide their consent at the start of the survey.

Yes. Participation in this survey is completely voluntary. Students are not required or obligated to participate.

Yes. All student voices are important in this survey. It is important that all students share their views for us to better understand prevailing campus cultures and support safer campuses. We appreciate participation from everyone.

In broad terms, diversity is any dimension that can be used to differentiate groups and people from one another.  It refers to differences in ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, ability, sexual orientation, faith, socio-economic status and class. But it also includes differences in life experiences, learning and working styles and personality types that can be engaged to achieve excellence. 

Inclusion is the active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity, where each person is valued and provided with the opportunity to participate fully in creating a successful and thriving community. It means recognizing the value that comes from the distinctive skills, experiences, and perspectives of all members of our community. Definitions for this and other important terms are also available within the survey.

Sexual violence means any sexual act or act targeting a person's sexuality, gender identity or gender expression, whether the act is physical or psychological in nature, that is committed, threatened or attempted against a person without the person's Consent, and includes things such as: Sexual Assault; Sexual Harassment; stalking; indecent exposure; voyeurism; and sexual exploitation. 

Definitions for this and other important terms

The survey will be administered between March 4 and March 26, 2021

When the survey opens, you will be sent an email inviting you to participate in the survey. The invitation will include a link to the survey landing page with more information about the survey. From the landing page you can access the survey directly.

Yes. The online survey may be completed on a mobile device, such as a smartphone, using an internet browser.

The online survey is set up to be consistent with web accessibility guidelines and is compatible with computer-assisted reading support systems such as read&write, Zoomtext, Kurzweil, JAWS, NVDA, and Orca. If you require another format beyond this, please contact Queen’s Accessibility Hub.

For every question on the survey, you will be given a set of responses from which to choose. Sometimes you will be asked to select one response and at other times you will be asked to select all responses that apply. Sometimes, you will be asked to enter your response.

The survey is estimated to take an average of 20-40 minutes to complete, depending on your experiences.

No. You can choose which questions you want to answer and are not required to complete the survey once you start it. You do need to answer 65% of the questions you are asked to receive a token of appreciation/acknowledgement.

If at any time during the survey you feel upset or experience anxiety, the following options will be available to you through the online survey:

• Quick exit button: This will take you out of the survey. You can choose to re-enter the survey later. If you do not go on to complete the survey by pressing the ‘submit’ button at the end of the survey, your responses will automatically be saved.

• Support / Resources button: This will provide you with information about the support services available to Queen’s students.

If you do not go on complete the survey by pressing the ‘submit’ button at the end of the survey, your responses will automatically be saved and recorded one week later.

You can leave your survey and then using the same computer / device, re-enter where you left off when you click on the survey link again. This functionality uses cookies to save your progress, so it will only work if you return to the survey on the same internet browser on the same computer / device to finish the survey, and you haven’t deleted cookies. If you choose to use a shared computer / device, please review these instructions regarding clearing a web browser cache.

Yes. If you need technical support while completing the survey, email irpsurv@queensu.ca.

Yes. To acknowledge your participation in the survey, you may be offered a token of appreciation when you complete the survey. This is an important survey, and we ask that you complete all the questions that you can. Although you can skip any individual question, you must answer at least 65% of the questions to receive this token of appreciation. After the survey is submitted, you will be forwarded to a separate form where you can select your token of appreciation.

To acknowledge your contribution, all survey respondents who complete 65% of the survey will be able to enter a draw to receive one of ten, $100 gift certificates to Skip the Dishes.

If you are one of the first 2000 respondents to complete 65% of the survey, we would like to offer you the choice of the following tokens of appreciation:

• You may select one of three local charitable organizations to receive a donation of $5 from Queen’s University, OR
• You may choose to receive a $5 FLEX credit to be used any time in the future at a Queen’s Hospitality Services retail location on campus.

Queen’s University will protect the privacy of students and is committed to ensure that your responses to this survey are anonymous. To ensure this, the information and process for managing tokens of appreciation / acknowledgement will be kept separate from the survey responses. Your email address and the record of whether you have received a token of appreciation / acknowledgement will be saved in a separate file from your survey responses.