Surveys
CAUL survey results are not accessible from the public pages of the website. CAUL Members may login to view results, reports and summaries.
See the tables below, organised by the year in which the survey was conducted.
Guidelines for conducting surveys via CAUL email lists
CAUL email lists may be used to conduct surveys of institutional practices and to disseminate recruitment information for surveys and other research that may interest list participants.
Conducting a survey of institutional practices via a CAUL email list
What is a survey?
A survey is an activity that solicits information from participants on a CAUL email list, generally related to institutional practices. This includes surveys conducted using survey software and questions asked in the body of an email.
Requirements
By surveying a CAUL email list, you commit to providing a summary of the results to the CAUL Office for upload to the CAUL survey archive.
Who can conduct a survey
Any list participant may conduct a survey.
How to survey a CAUL email list
Before conducting a survey, please check the survey archives to see if a similar survey has already been conducted.
Please follow these guidelines when conducting a survey:
- Include information about how you intend to use and report on the data, including an indication of whether the respondent and/or their institution will be identified in the results
Include the following information in the subject line:
- Name of the survey
- Name of the institution conducting the survey
- Survey closing date
- Nominate a closing date for the responses - ideally, allow at least two weeks for responses
- After the closing date, collate or summarise responses and forward the summary to the CAUL Office for upload to the survey repository
Where the questions are asked in the body of the email rather than via a survey tool, consider including responses from your institution as a guide to the questions' intention.
Ethics clearance is only required for surveys of institutional practices conducted via a CAUL email list if you intend to produce research publications from the results.
How to respond to a survey of a CAUL email list
When replying to questions asked in the body of an email, use the reply function to ensure that the subject and content of the original message remain intact.
Send your reply directly to the surveyor, not to the email list (except for surveys conducted via the Deputy University Librarians Network, where the community norm is to respond to the entire email list).
Disseminating recruitment information for surveys and research
List participants may disseminate recruitment information for surveys and other research that may be of interest to list participants. In doing so, list participants must follow these guidelines:
- Research must have ethics approval, and the name of the ethics committee that approved it and contact information for ethical enquiries must be included in the email.
- The email should indicate how interested parties can follow up on findings.
- To obtain ethics approval, researchers may require a letter from CAUL granting permission to post to the email list/s to accompany their ethics application. Requests for approvals should be sent to the CAUL Office.
A list of surveys for each year is displayed below.