Internal data request

All faculty, staff, and students intending to survey members of the UWL community (students, faculty, and staff) or need student data to conduct research should review and abide by protocols established by the UWL Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Even if a researcher believes that their project is exempt from IRB protocol, Institutional Research, Assessment, and Planning will request proof of exemption or approval prior to filling requests for data.

Gender and racial/ethnic background of students is FERPA protected information. As such, Institutional Research, Assessment, and Planning cannot fill requests for data based on these characteristics without informed consent of the students to be surveyed. Even if a project has IRB approval or exemption, IRAP is bound by this obligation. In these instances, we recommend considering alternative methods for reaching these specific populations, such as working through appropriate student organizations.

If you are working on a survey or project and have questions about ways to phrase demographic questions about gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, first-generation status, income status, or military status, please consult this guide for examples of possible item phrasing.

By submitting a request, you agree to:

• Use the information only for the purposes of the identified research project. Any other use of the information requires additional approval from the IRB.
• Ensure no one outside the research team has access to the data. This includes discussing confidential information in a place where such discussion might be overheard. Neither should confidential information be discussed in a way that would allow an authorized person to associate (either correctly or incorrectly) an identity with such data. 
• Report data and results in aggregate tables and charts. If aggregate data contains cells with headcounts of five or fewer, please contact IRAP for assistance in displaying this data.
• Delete the data at the conclusion of this project or one year from the date of receiving the data. Student researchers shall delete the data at the completion of the requirements for the course.

When requesting a list of email addresses to send a survey, please consider your desired sample size and expected response rate. Then, to avoid survey fatigue across campus, please request the minimum number of email addresses necessary to achieve your goal. There may be several surveys taking place on campus at any time, and survey fatigue leads to lower response rates for everyone.  Please submit your requests for email addresses as early as reasonable, and please be flexible with your launch dates whenever possible.

Steps for requesting data

1. All requests - including those for email lists for in-class surveys - must be made by the supervising UWL faculty or staff member.
2. Requests must be made through the Data Request Form linked below.
3. Researchers are encouraged to review the FERPA guidelines to inform research design when considering samples of specific populations. IRAP can assist with strategies including stratified sampling, proportionate sampling, or work with service units on campus to help deliver the survey to the population of interest without disclosing the personally identifiable information (PII) of the students in the population.
4. IRB exemption or approval must be attached or referenced within the data request.

The data will be returned to the requester in an Excel file unless requested in a different format. IRAP will disclose the minimum amount of information necessary to fill the request in order to protect PII and expand the population available to the researcher for sampling. Even with these precautions taken, the data in its raw format should be considered sensitive information.

Due to the volume of requests, it may take up to 10 business days to respond to your request.

Click on the data request link below. Our data request form is hosted by ITS; you will need to log into the Help Desk with your NetID account. You will then need to select I have a request, then Internal Data Request from the Request Type drop-down menu.

Please complete all the fields in the online form. The form will time-out after 10 minutes. After you click "save," we will receive the request, and a confirmation email will be sent to your UWL email address shortly thereafter.

Data request form

Requests regarding faculty/staff data are considered with attention to concerns regarding personal identifiable information. Identification concerns affect the level of detail we may be able to provide in requests for faculty and staff data. Requests for unit-level data should come from a recognized faculty committee or be associated with a research project. IRB review is needed if data is requested for research purposes. We will abide by the following general guidelines for providing unit-level faculty and staff data: 

• Data that will identify individuals will not be provided (names, ID numbers, departments).
• We can only provide college or school level data if the combination of other data items does not potentially identify individuals.
• In general, gender data can be provided at the level of college/school.
• College/school data might not be provided by race/ethnicity due to variation in size. When racial/ethnic data is provided, due to small sample sizes, we may not be able to disaggregate specific racial/ethnic groups.
• Beyond demographic variables, employment or career-related data requests will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and will be limited to standard faculty and staff career data maintained by HR.

Due to the volume of requests, it may take up to 10 business days to respond to your request.

Click on the data request link below. Our data request form is hosted by ITS; you will need to log into the Help Desk with your NetID account. You will then need to select I have a request, then Internal Data Request from the Request Type drop-down menu.

Please complete all the fields in the online form. The form will time-out after 10 minutes. After you click "submit," we will receive the request, and a confirmation email will be sent to your UWL email address shortly thereafter.

Data request form

Distributing Your Survey 
IRAP will provide your list of email addresses in an Excel spreadsheet.  We are often asked about the best method for distributing surveys. 

Qualtrics 

IRAP recommends using Qualtrics for distributing your survey. UWL has partnered with Qualtrics to provide web-based survey software to faculty, staff, and students.  All faculty, staff members, and students have access to the system. 

For information about creating a mailing list from the Excel spreadsheet provided by IRAP, please see this link.  For information about distributing your survey once you have created a mailing list, please see this link. The UWL Information Technology Services office provides support for Qualtrics. 
 

Sending the Survey from Outlook or another Email Account 

If you choose not to use Qualtrics and instead use Outlook (or another email account) to send a link to your survey, please use the BCC (blind carbon copy) line. By using BCC, you ensure that your recipients will receive the link to your survey but will not be able to view all the other email addresses that also received your survey. In other words, the other email addresses are invisible to the recipients. This provides both security and privacy to the individuals receiving your survey and creates a cleaner and more professional looking email. 

Please note that when using your UWL email, there is a 500-email address limit. In the case that your sample is larger than 500 emails and you are using Outlook, you may need to break up your list and send multiple messages.  For large surveys in particular, IRAP again recommends using Qualtrics.