In response to a rapidly increasing number of requests to survey the Rensselaer community, the Institute has adopted a Survey Procedure designed to manage requests to survey Rensselaer students, faculty, staff, parents, and/or alumni. 

The Survey Research Procedure requires that internal academic and non-academic units wishing to conduct research surveys or general surveys on Rensselaer students, faculty, staff, parents and alumni, or wishing to use Rensselaer resources (RPI Qualtrics, for example) to conduct a survey of students, faculty, staff, parents and alumni must:

• Contact the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA) to begin the coordination process.
• Obtain IRB approval if necessary. IRB approval may be needed for any given survey that uses human subjects, and such approval does not guarantee that the survey will be administered.

Note that student course evaluations are exempt from this procedure.

The Survey Procedure requires that external academic and non-academic units wishing to conduct research surveys or general surveys on Rensselaer community:

• Obtain IRB approval. To do so, see https://research.rpi.edu/compliance/oversight-committees/institutional-review-board and contact Stanley Dunn, PhD, IRB Chair, at 518-276-8433 or dunns6@rpi.edu
• Obtain Student life approval for FERPA and HIPAA (if needed). To do so, contact Travis Apgar, Assistant VP and Dean of Students, at 518-276-6266 or apgart@rpi.edu
• Coordinate the activities with OIRA after getting two approvals above.

The goals of this procedure are to:

• Minimize the survey fatigue of members within the Rensselaer community;
• Ensure that individual surveys are necessary, either to fulfill a strategic objective or to comply with federal accountability or accreditation requirements.
• Facilitate sharing of data and avoid redundancy;
• Ensure that the data collected are valid, reliable, and used to inform decision-making.