Since 1997, the Research Department of the American Sociological Association has conducted a census of U.S. academic sociology departments. The survey instrument has been designed to meet the information needs of those sociology departments, including demographic data about faculty, and types of courses offered. In June 2012, we launched our 2012 department survey and expect to complete the data collection process soon.
For those of you who already have completed the 2012 survey, we in the Research Department wish to know:
What aspects or sections of the survey were most challenging or time consuming for you to complete? Were there certain types of information that you were not able to obtain or obtain in their entirety?
- What aspects or sections of the survey were the simplest or least time consuming for you to complete?
- Did you delegate the gathering of information for this survey to departmental staff or other colleagues?
- Did completing this survey help you or your department faculty or staff in other ways (such as providing information to your administration)?
Please use this blog as a forum for discussing your experiences with taking this survey. Your thoughts will be extraordinarily helpful when we interpret the survey results and when design our next census of academic sociology departments in the United States.
