SUPPORTING RESEARCH
Development of the Growing Departmental Inclusiveness Survey (GDIS)
The key component of the Growing Departmental Inclusiveness website is the GDIS. On this page, you will find how the GDIS was developed. We avoid technical jargon as much as possible on this page, and for those interested, we will post a link to an academic paper on the GDIS later.
The following steps were taken to develop the questions comprising the GDIS and the five areas of inclusiveness it measures. A Mellon grant administered by ACS supported the research.
Focus Grouping Inclusiveness. Focus groups and supplemental individual interviews were held at the University of the South with faculty participants of diverse gender, background, rank, tenure-track status, and tenure. Participants considered and discussed inclusiveness in academic departments, how they know when it is present and when it isn’t, and aspects of inclusiveness that are important to them individually. Discussions and interviews were transcribed.
- Generating Inclusiveness Questions. Using the transcriptions as a guide, the GDIS researchers and Psychology colleagues at the University of the South generated questions to measure themes present in the transcriptions.
- Testing Inclusiveness Questions. The pool of 51 questions was administered to over 285 faculty across the ACS member institutions, excluding the University of the South) using the following sampling strategy. Publicly available faculty directories and webpages were used to create a diverse sampling group (as could be gathered through public access information and images) regarding gender, background, rank, tenure-track status, and tenure. A random sample was then taken from the larger group and invited to the survey by email. Subsequent invitations were sent out to several waves of random samples. Over 285 faculty completed the GDIS along with other measures and demographic questions. Respondents were not asked to provide their institutional affiliations to avoid concerns about the comparison between ACS member institutions.
- Listening to the Data: Are There Important Sub-Areas of Inclusiveness? A data reduction technique, Factor Analysis, was used to ascertain if respondents answered the questions such that groups of questions might be considered to measure definable aspects of inclusiveness. The results supported a final total of thirty-six questions, measuring five aspects of inclusiveness: Interpersonal Environment, Hiring & Retention, Protection from Bias, Supportive Administration, and Support for Diverse Study. Each subset of questions measuring these aspects is considered a sub-scale, while the entire GDIS can be referred to as a measure or scale or, more colloquially, as a survey. When an individual completes the GDIS, we obtain six aggregate pieces of information: that individual’s average rating of their department’s inclusiveness in the five areas mentioned above and an average rating of their department’s inclusiveness overall. In practice, individual scores are combined with others to assess departmental ratings. We hasten to add, however, that averages representing entire departments are not the whole story, as when a person or persons from a marginalized group provide responses that differ widely from the average, the story of the average must be questioned.
- Listening to the Data: What is Associated with GDIS scores? In testing the GDIS items using responses from ACS faculty, we also asked respondents to complete existing measures of Workplace Ostracism, Workplace Integration, Job Satisfaction, and Work Engagement (Ferris, et al., 2008; Hagler, et al., 2022; and Bal, et al., 2011), among others. While statistical results will be made available, we note that all five areas were found to have significant associations with the additional measures, such that lower scores in each area were associated with higher scores on Workplace Ostracism, while higher scores in each of the five areas were associated with greater Workplace Integration, Job Satisfaction, Work Engagement.
- Listening to the Data: What is Associated with GDIS scores? In testing the GDIS items using responses from ACS faculty, we also asked respondents to complete existing measures of Workplace Ostracism, Workplace Integration, Job Satisfaction, and Work Engagement (Ferris, et al., 2008; Hagler, et al., 2022; and Bal, et al., 2011), among others. While statistical results will be made available, we note that all five areas were found to have significant associations with the additional measures, such that lower scores in each area were associated with higher scores on Workplace Ostracism, while higher scores in each of the five areas were associated with greater Workplace Integration, Job Satisfaction, Work Engagement.