Cornell Survey and Assessment Review Group - Institutional Research & Planning

The Cornell Survey and Assessment Review Group (CSARG) coordinates, supports, and reviews data collection efforts that rely upon members of the Cornell community as participants. Cornell professionals can seek guidance from CSARG for any data collection project, large or small, whether involving Cornell students, staff or faculty as participants. While web-based surveys are the most common methodology proposed, the committee focus includes and encourages the use of other data collection methods such as interviews or focus groups.

Contact CSARG About Your Project

Data collection projects that are larger in scope should be shared with the committee before they are initiated. Use the form below to share information about your survey.

Member List

The committee is comprised of representatives from Student and Campus Life (SCL), Institutional Research and Planning (IRP), and elsewhere at Cornell — all with expertise in assessment and research methods. Our member list and contact information is available here.

Calendar of Campus Surveys

In an institution as large as Cornell it is difficult to be aware of other data collection activities that have been or soon will be conducted. The CSARG maintains a web-based calendar of SCL, IRP and Graduate School-based activities, as well as projects that originate beyond these domains, when known.

Survey calendar

We encourage you to consult this calendar in the early stages of planning your own project. Contact Monique Harrison to have your project added to this calendar.

Why CSARG Was Established

There is an ever-growing emphasis on using systematically-collected data to inform institutional planning and decision-making. As a result, our faculty, staff and, most of all, our students receive an increasing number of invitations to take part in various data collection activities, particularly web-based surveys. However important and well intentioned these efforts, this greater volume of data collection activity increases the likelihood of duplication in the types of data being collected and decreases the likelihood that people will agree to participate in a given project. Furthermore, these efforts do not always follow best practices in data collection design. CSARG was established to address these concerns.

Submitting a Form

CSARG Project Proposal Form

Please complete this form to provide us with information about the research you plan to conduct.

Title of project
Contact name
Title/Position
Department, office or program
Email
Date proposal is being submitted
MM slash DD slash YYYY
Provide a brief description of the purpose and goals of this project.
Briefly describe the importance of this project to your department or Cornell.
Describe the population of interest (e.g. first year students, graduate students), sample size, and your method for selecting the sample.
Describe the data collection methods to be used (e.g., survey, interviews, focus groups)?
Please upload your survey instrument or interview protocol.
Max. file size: 1,000 MB.
About how long will it take to participate in this project (e.g. 5 minutes)?
Describe any incentives that will be offered to participants.
What are the planned start and end dates of your study?
Start date of project
MM slash DD slash YYYY
End date of project
MM slash DD slash YYYY
What are your plans for analyzing data and sharing results?
When the project is complete, please click below.
- The project is complete
Did you modify your project in any way from how it was described in your proposal (e.g., did you change your methodology in some way)? If so, please briefly describe any changes you made and why you made them.
Briefly describe the main findings from your project. How have these results been shared? How are they being used?
Please upload any results you would be willing to share on our public web pages.
Max. file size: 1,000 MB.
Do not upload results that would allow individual participants to be identified.
What are your next steps regarding this project?

Other Resources

Here are some other resources to check out when planning a data collection project at Cornell:

Surveys conducted by Cornell’s office of Institutional Research and Planning
Guidelines for surveying students at Cornell: So You Want to Survey Cornell Students?
Recruiting participants for research: Access to Cornell Campus Constituencies for Research Purposes
Does your project require an application to the Cornell IRB office?: IRB Decision Tree
University registrar’s guidelines for the use of student data in research