children crafting at festival

We want to hear your views on Societal Engagement at Imperial!

Every two years we run a staff survey to look into what public engagement activities staff have taken part in, what motivates them to get involved, what barriers they face, and to what degree they feel that there is a supportive culture for engagement at Imperial.

The survey is extremely important for a number of reasons:

  • It is the largest investigation into societal engagement activities across the whole College and provides key data to evidence the level of participation for our funders and policy makers.
  • It helps us to understand the collective impacts our engagement is having on public and internal audiences.
  • It highlights where our enabling activities, such as training and awards, are facilitating engagement and where more focus is needed.

You don’t need to have taken part in any engagement activities to get involved – in fact, we would love to hear why!

The survey should only take about 10 minutes and those who complete it have the chance to win a £50 shopping voucher.

The Societal Engagement staff survey 2019 is now closed. Thank you to all those who completed it. We will be sharing the results shortly.

FAQs

1. What is Societal Engagement?

Societal engagement is how we describe interacting with public groups outside your research area – whether that’s school or community groups, patients or members of other public groups. It’s about having a conversation with someone outside of academia and your field of study, through a range of formats – some face-to-face and some not.

2. How do I take part in the staff survey?

You will receive an email to your work email address containing a unique link to access the survey online.  This email is personal to you and can only be used to submit one set of responses. The survey is open from 12 August to 13 September 2019.

3. Who can take part?

Invitations will be sent out to all staff listed on the HR system. Any member of Imperial staff can take part, regardless of contract type, job role or length of service. You don’t need to have engaged the public before – we want to hear from those who have done no engagement to a lot of engagement.

4. How long does the survey take to complete?

As a guide, the survey should take between 10-15 minutes to complete.

5. What do I do if I haven’t received my survey invite?

If you have not received your invite when the survey opens please contact societal_engagement@imperial.ac.uk

6. Do I have to complete the online survey all in one go?

We recommend that you complete the survey in one sitting if possible, but there is the option to save your responses and come back to it at a later time via your survey link.

7. What do I need to do if I require the survey in a different format?

If you need access to the survey in a specific format or a paper copy please email societal_engagement@imperial.ac.uk

8. Who should I contact if I have a query about the survey or need help completing it?

Please email societal_engagement@imperial.ac.uk for any questions or issues.

9. What will happen to my responses?

Your responses will be compiled anonymously with others, we will never share anything that could be used to identify you. They will be used to understand the scale of engagement activity happening at Imperial and the factors which can best support more to take place. The anonymised findings will be written up and presented to a range of internal groups. As a result of previous surveys we have created programmes such as new training sessions and changed the approach to other initiatives.

10. Have you run a Societal Engagement Staff Survey before?

Yes – this is the third time we have run this survey, we repeat it every two years to understand trends over time.