Miami University
PA-12: Assessing Employee Satisfaction

Miami University seeks to create an environment characterized by openness, fairness, and equal access for all students, staff, and faculty. A welcoming and inclusive campus climate is grounded in mutual respect, nurtured by dialogue, evidenced by a pattern of civil interaction, and is one of the foundations of our educational model. Creating and maintaining a community environment that respects individual needs, abilities, and potential is critically important. The "One Miami" Campus Climate Survey is a project designed to evaluate the experience of the current campus climate by all members of our community. The goal of this project is multifold:

Identify successful initiatives, uncover any challenges facing members of our community, and develop strategic initiatives to build on the successes and address the challenges. To ensure full transparency and to provide a more complete perspective, Miami University contracts with Rankin & Associates Consulting to help lead this effort. Rankin & Associates has conducted more than 170 campus climate assessment projects over the last 20 years. An agency team will work with a group of Miami students, staff, and faculty to develop and implement the assessment.

In the final report, the quantitative data analysis methodology is as follows:

“The data were first analyzed to tabulate individual responses to each of the questions in the survey. Descriptive statistics were calculated by salient group memberships (e.g., gender identity, racial identity, primary position) to provide additional information regarding participant responses. Throughout the report, information is presented using valid percentages. Actual percentages with missing or “no response” information may be found in the survey data tables. The purpose for this discrepancy in reporting is to note the missing or “no response” data in the appendices for institutional information while removing such data within the report for subsequent cross tabulation and significance testing using the chi-square test for independence. Chi-square tests identify that significant differences exist but do not specify if differences exist between specific groups. Therefore, these analyses included post-hoc investigations of statistically significant findings by conducting z-tests between column proportions for each row in the chi-square contingency table, with a Bonferroni adjustment for larger contingency tables. This approach is useful because it compares individual cells to each other to determine if they are statistically different. Thus, the data may be interpreted more precisely by showing the source of the greatest discrepancies. The statistically significant distinctions between groups are offered throughout the report. For groups with response rates less than 30%, caution is recommended when generalizing to the entire constituent group”.

The Campus Climate Survey Task Force is tasked with (1) identifying successful initiatives that promote or support diversity and inclusion across Miami campuses, (2) uncovering challenges facing members of the Miami community that make them feel excluded or unable to excel in their role or academic field, and (3) developing strategic initiatives to build on the successes and challenges to diversity at Miami. By February 1, 2019, the Task Force will develop action plans for a prioritized list of high-impact issues that are important to the campus community and present an opportunity for measurable success in the short term. These action plans will include identifying the parties responsible for implementation, the specific time frame for those activities, and specific measurable metrics to evaluate success. By May 1, 2019, the Task Force will measure and evaluate the success of these short-term action plans and report to President Crawford.