In Unit 1, reasons why a person or group of persons would want to institute a climate assessment as well as an overview of the process itself were provided. The decision to initiate a climate assessment begins with a research question or series of questions to explore through a structured research process that can vary in size and scope depending on the nature of the question(s), available resources, and anticipated outcomes and applications. Careful preparation is needed for the process to work and have meaningful outcomes. The first step in climate assessment is the preassessment stage. Preassessment is planning. This first step is crucial to generating useful data that can be applied to program improvement. Steps in the preassessment stage include:
- Establishing goals for the assessment process;
- Identifying key players to involve; and
- Developing a plan to collect and analyze data, including:
- Identifying existing resources and data on campus
- Selecting appropriate measurement methods, and
- Strategizing how to use and apply the data in meaningful ways.
The preassessment phase includes determining who will come together to generate a climate assessment, what stakeholders will be involved in this process, and who will decide what participants will be the target audience of the climate assessment. Often a good first step in the planning process is to assemble an Advisory Committee. This panel of individuals is selected from various units on campus that either have a stake in the climate assessment process and its outcome (stakeholders) or who are able to contribute energies and resources to the cause (administrators, faculty, office personnel, consultants, etc.). The committee may vary in size and scope depending on the research question and available resources including staff time. For larger projects, some committees may include numerous upper-level administrators in addition to key stakeholders such as faculty, service personnel, students, consultants, etc., whereas for smaller projects, committees may only need to be comprised of a few representatives relevant to the project.
Once a team of stakeholders is convened, they will determine or refine what needs to be assessed, depending on whether goals for the assessment already exist. For instance, it may be as specific as how the Disability Support Services (DSS) office evaluates the services provided or as general as how students with disabilities evaluate all college services. In this vein, a climate assessment may include measures of personnel and student attitudes, provision of instructional or program supports, and/or facility design and accessibility, to name a few. Each of these examples is a subtopic of research inquiry known as a domain, which is measured in an assessment process using data collection procedures after the research question(s) has been identified (see Unit 3 for information on data collection procedures).
The overarching research question(s) or purpose for initiating a climate assessment process may precede assembly of an Advisory Committee based on identified need, or it may arise from meetings with the Advisory Committee and likewise the stakeholders who are invested in the assessment’s outcome. Regardless, once an overarching question has been formulated, the question must be narrowed down to domains with variables that can be identified and measured to produce data. Domains can be thought of as a cluster of related subtopics or competencies for a given research question and are used to help identify specific variables to measure. For example, if a person in Career Services wants to know if junior and senior undergraduate students are seeking out work-based, experiential learning opportunities (the research question), then this person will need to define the cluster or types of experiential opportunities that exist that he/she wants to measure, such as paid internships and externships, volunteer internships and externships, summer programs, etc. (domains). Domains in effect help to shape the parameters of the study. The variables that the individual would then want to collect data on would include such things as frequency of utilization, duration, paid versus non-paid opportunities, how students learn of opportunities, etc. Variables are concrete units of measurement than can be investigated (as in exploratory research) or manipulated to produce an effect (as in experimental research). Climate assessments can be large or small, exploratory or experimental, with many or few domains and variables.
Typically after the research question is refined to identify possible domains and variables, the target audience of the climate assessment is selected. The target audience will be the group of respondents who participate in the climate assessment and who also may be (and in most cases should be) stakeholders involved in the planning and research process from beginning to end. The preassessment process also determines where and when the climate assessment will be implemented, what data collection measures will be used, whether an evaluation of the assessment process itself (i.e., evaluation of instruments and procedures used, consumer satisfaction with project and outcome) will be part of the research endeavor, and perhaps most importantly, how the data will be interpreted and used to affect change.
