HEDS Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey

HEDS Diversity & Equity Survey registration is now closed. 2024-2025 registration will open late summer.

HEDS Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey

The HEDS Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey asks students, faculty, staff, and administrators about their:

perceptions of their institution’s climate,
perceptions of how their institution supports diversity and equity, and
experiences with discrimination and harassment at their institution.

Institutions can use information from this survey to develop a better understanding of the extent to which their campus climate supports diversity and equity, and to inform and improve support, policies, and practices at their institution related to diversity and equity, including those to prevent or respond to discrimination and harassment.

The survey is designed to be administered to everyone in the campus community – faculty, staff, administrators, and students. The survey usually takes less than 15 minutes to complete, and participants’ responses are anonymous.

Since 2022, we’ve been collaborating with researchers at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin to examine how state policies, the community and institutional environment, and institutional policies affect binge drinking and peer victimization, including racial, sexual, and gender minority victimization on college campuses. As part of that collaboration, there are a small number of questions and an optional undergraduate survey module that support this research on the HEDS Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey.

Registration Deadline Change

We are now requiring that you register at least seven weeks (35 business days) before the day you want your survey to start. With the high demand for our surveys, this new timeline ensures we can do a good job of administering your survey for you. We urge you to download and read the survey information sheet by clicking on the “Survey Options, Policies, and Fees (PDF)” button found in the Downloads section of this webpage. This document details all the survey options available to you, as well as our expectations, practices, fees, and terms of service.

Click on the following questions to learn more.

When can we administer the survey?

You can administer the HEDS Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey for any 3–6 week period between October 9, 2023, and May 31, 2024. Please note that the last day to administer has been extended from April 26, 2024.

Please be aware that you must register at least seven weeks (35 business days) prior to the date on which you plan to begin administering the survey. The last day to register for a 2023-2024 administration is March 22, 2024.

What is included when we do the survey?

All participating institutions will receive:

A Real-time report – a password-protected, online report which will provide a preliminary look at aggregated responses to select questions. This report will help you gauge response rates and give you a first look at high-level data from the survey.
SPSS and Microsoft Excel files with your participants’ responses (some responses removed or combined with others when needed to prevent participants from being identified). We will review open-ended text responses and remove the names of anyone who identifies themselves or is accused of discrimination and/or harassment, and send the open-ended text responses in a separate file.
Compilation of your participants’ responses to the open-ended questions.
A Comparative report – compares results from your students and employees to those of students and employees from all other participating institutions on all survey questions as well as the key indicators.

Timing of data files and reports:

In order to protect the anonymity of your respondents, we remove all personally identifying information from your data files and review the open-ended responses thoroughly before sending them to you. We will send your data files and compilation of open-ended responses to you within 50 business days from the date your survey closes.
- Given the sensitive nature of the data from these surveys, your institution must accept our secure data handling agreements as outlined in the registration form and the survey’s information sheet in order to receive a data file. We also encourage you to work with your institutional review board (IRB) to help to assure your campus constituencies that your institution is treating the survey data and findings appropriately.
We do two rounds of comparative reports. One for institutions that administer from October to December and a second for institutions that administer from January to April. This allows us to get this report to institutions in a more timely manner.

Can we customize this survey?

YES! Here’s how:

We insert your institution’s name at the top of each page of the survey and in the text of applicable questions
You can customize the survey invitations and reminders
You can add custom, institution-specific questions at the end of the survey

While you can add supplemental questions to the end, we do not modify our survey questions or response options. In order for us to offer the benefit of comparative data between participating institutions in our survey reports, the questions and response options have to be the same across all the colleges and universities using the survey.

What does the survey cost?

Survey base cost – $2,300
Survey base cost for HEDS members – $575

There are some custom options for additional fees. You will find all survey options and fees in the survey information sheet. Please click on the “Survey Options, Policies, and Fees (PDF)” button in the Downloads section of this webpage.

To learn more about your institution becoming a HEDS member, please visit our Join HEDS page.