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

Survey Administration

Thank you for choosing to administer the PACE Climate Survey for Community Colleges. We are excited to work with you as you gather valuable employee perspectives that will help you identify institutional strengths as well as areas for growth. Throughout the survey administration process, the PACE team are available to address your questions or concerns.

Indicate Interest in Administering the PACE Survey

  • Contact us at pace_survey@ncsu.edu to let us know you are interested in administering the PACE Survey. We will send you a quick questionnaire to complete that will ask about any custom questions, question sets, or comparison groups you would like on your survey.
  • Your assigned report author will guide you through creating the service agreement.
    • All agreements are signed by our Executive Director, a representative of your institution, and the Dean of the College of Education at NC State. All agreements are considered final once the Dean’s signature has been added.
  • Payment: Your report author will provide you with an invoice and will also inform you of any applicable discounts. At least 50% of the total invoice is due by the survey launch date. The remaining 50% (if applicable) is due upon project completion.

Prepare for Launch

  • Survey Creation: Your report author will develop your survey based on your responses to the entrance questionnaire. Your report author will send your survey and any additional communications to you for review ahead of survey launch. Keep in mind that in addition to the standard PACE 46 questions, your survey can include the following:
  • Survey Distribution List: If you are sending us a participant list for your survey, please send an Excel spreadsheet of participant names and email addresses to pace_survey@ncsu.edu. Please put the participants’ first name under column A, last name under column B, and email address under column C.
  • Share Informationwith Campus Partners and Offices: Inform your IT staff that PACE survey email invitations will be coming so as to avoid issues with spam filters.
    • The survey comes from pace_survey@ncsu.edu.
    • The IP ranges that our survey platform sends email on are 162.247.216.0/22 and  162.247.219.57
  • Promote the PACE Survey on your campus: Promoting the PACE survey beforehand will help increase its visibility so that invitation emails are opened as opposed to being skipped. Some great ways to promote the survey include:
    • email announcements from a Chancellor or President
    • communicate the value of the survey
    • discussing the survey at meetings
    • promotional fliers in common areas
    • and mentioning the survey through institutional social media accounts
  • Survey Timeline: PACE Surveys are administered during the academic year. Surveys are typically open for about 3 weeks.
    • For the 2023-2024 academic year, all PACE Surveys must launch by no later April 12th and must close on/by April 26th, 2024.

Launch the Survey and Report Development

  • Response Rates: Your report author will provide you with a response rate tracker which provides an estimated number of responses to the survey. Our average response rate is approximately 48%.
  • Reminders: If you provided us with an employee email list, we will send once weekly reminders throughout the duration of the survey.
  • Survey Close: Surveys typically close 2-3 weeks after launch. Your survey can be extended in an effort to increase your response rate.
  • Report Development: It takes approximately 10 weeks after the survey close date, not including university breaks and holidays, to put together your PACE reports. Each report goes through three rounds of edits to ensure that we are providing you with the highest quality reports as possible.
  • Reports you will receive:
    • Executive Summary
    • PACE Report
    • Demographics Report
    • Personnel Classification Report
    • Custom Report (which encompasses custom questions and custom demographic questions)
    • Question Set Report(s) (if applicable)
    • Qualitative Report
    • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Qualitative Report
    • Report Interpretations Instructions
    • Excel Data File with Codebook
    • Any additional services as requested