Personal Information Collection via Forms, Registrations, and Surveys

Surveys, forms, and registrations present a unique opportunity to get to know the audience.  When structuring your questionnaire, it is important to keep in mind what information will be directly applicable and useful to your immediate goals.  Demographic data and personal identifiers (like gender and race/ethnicity), in particular, require consideration and balance between respecting respondents’ privacy, maximizing the accuracy of the data, and minimizing the burden on survey respondents and registrants.

1. Clearly identify the business need for the data to be collected, including how the data requested will be used in analysis and implementation of the data collection goals.  If the data is not directly applicable, it is better not to ask for it and be responsible for safely storing it.
2. Once the business need has been established, determine whether the information you need is already available within the University. Some demographic data is available in the Academic Data Warehouse (ADW). If you don’t have access to this data, in many cases Institutional Research can provide you with demographic data on students, faculty and staff. You can send an email to asirhelp@bu.edu with a request for this information.
3. For any personal information requested, clearly articulate to the survey audience the need for the data to be collected, and spell out in detail the ways in which this information will be used.
4. If you will be comparing your data to a benchmark of university data, you should use language for your questions that is already University-approved for use in diversity and inclusion efforts. You can find these questions here (hyperlinks) for race/ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and pronouns.

Please reach out to datagov@bu.edu if you have any questions on the best way to obtain or access data, or the proper usage of data.