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Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research
PACE Climate Survey for Community Colleges

Confidentiality

CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT

Your PACE Climate Survey responses and personal details, such as your name, email, or IP address, will be kept private and protected. All responses are included in the overall reporting of the survey data. However, to protect your identity, when we report findings by group (e.g., personnel classification, gender, age), responses will not appear if fewer than seven people are in that group. If you write something in an open-ended question that might identify who you are, those identifying details will be edited to make sure your identity stays private. In rare situations, such as receiving a comment about harming yourself or another individual, we are legally obligated to report identifying information back to your institution.

CONFIDENTIALITY TENETS

  1. We believe in preserving the voice of survey respondents while maintaining the respondents’ confidentiality and authenticity of their response.
  2. As researchers, we have an obligation to protect the safety and well being of participants and their colleagues. On very rare occasions, this may require us to break confidentiality to inform an institution of immediate safety concerns. 
  3. In the event that we must break confidentiality to protect the safety of participants and others, this will be carried out in a careful and intentional manner with the most limited exposure possible. 
  4. Our duty is to protect participants’ privacy as much as possible. We accomplish this by reporting results in aggregate without individual identifiers and redacting personally identifying information when necessary.
  5. Our responsibility is to provide a confidential space for participants to voice genuine feedback and to empower institutions with key insights to better understand their employees’ experiences. 
  6. We take our role in confidentiality seriously and believe in continuously improving our own processes to adapt with the changing landscape of education. 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Who sees my individual survey responses? Will my boss or colleagues know what I said?

No one at your institution will see your individual, identifiable responses. We take our role in maintaining a confidential space very seriously. Your survey responses and personal details (like your name, email, or IP address) are kept strictly private and protected. All data is combined into overall reports, and we never report findings for any specific group (such as department, gender, or age) if it contains fewer than seven people. This ensures your voice is heard without compromising your identity.

I want to leave open-ended feedback, but I’m worried my writing style or the specific situation I describe will give me away. How do you handle written comments?

We actively review and redact written responses to preserve your anonymity. If you share details in an open-ended question that could inadvertently reveal who you are, those specific identifying details will be carefully edited or removed before being shared with your institution. Our goal is to protect your privacy while still delivering your genuine, authentic feedback to help your college improve.

Since this survey is being conducted by an outside organization, how is my data being protected?

As an independent third-party research organization, our primary duty and obligation is to protect your privacy and well-being. We are completely separate from your institution’s leadership. We secure your data, remove individual identifiers, and only report results in aggregate (combined group data). We continuously evaluate and improve our processes to ensure your data remains safe and secure. 

Are there any circumstances where my confidentiality would be broken?

Confidentiality would only be broken in extremely rare situations where there is an immediate safety concern. Specifically, if a comment indicates a threat of harm to yourself or to another individual, we are legally obligated to report that identifying information back to your institution to ensure everyone’s safety. If this rare step must be taken, it will be done in a highly careful, intentional manner with the absolute minimum exposure possible.

Why do you collect demographic information (like age, gender, or personnel class) if the survey is confidential?

Collecting this information helps your institution better understand the unique experiences of different employee groups. However, your personal demographics will never be used to single you out. To prevent anyone from guessing your identity, we enforce a strict rule: if fewer than seven people fall into a specific demographic breakdown, those results are completely hidden from the report. Your identity remains protected.