In respect to all of CRi’s student surveys, faculty surveys, staff surveys, and administration surveys - CRi’s approach to data collection is easily summarized: We will collect no personal information while collecting valuable information.
There are two methods available to achieve this — with the choice of method dependent on the types of resources available to your IT staff.
In the simplest model, CRi will forward a set of unique identifiers, one for each person to be surveyed. The identifiers are assigned by your IT staff to a master database of all those eligible to respond for the duration of the survey. The individual invitations sent out to potential respondents include the unique identifier. CRi captures the identifier as part of the respondent’s completion of the survey. In this way, CRi does not know who is responding and, because the unique identifier is stripped from any data that might eventually be shared with your institution, you will also not be able to identify any of the respondents.
A more sophisticated model involves your IT team creating a whitelisted database of all potential respondents and forwarding that database to CRi. CRi uses the database to invite respondents. When the whitelisted emails reach your servers, the addresses are converted to normal internal email addresses and forwarded to the intended recipient. When the recipient responds, CRi captures a unique identifier from the body of the email. Again, CRi does not know who is responding and, because the unique identifier is stripped from any data that might eventually be shared with your institution, you will also not be able to identify any of the respondents.
Diagrams are available outlining each step.
All data collected resides on secure servers located in Toronto and managed by Equinx for QuestionPro, CRi’s survey platform. No information ever leaves Canada.
CRi recently undertook a survey of 180,000 students registered at 25 post-secondary institutions in BC for the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills & Training. Over 18,000 students responded. At no point did CRi or the Ministry learn the identification of any of the students surveyed or who responded.
Inquiries:
David Graham
davidgraham.thexenops@cri-facts.com
Kirk Kelly
kkelly@cri-facts.com