MyVoice Survey FAQ

We hope to conduct the MyVoice Survey every 4 years, alternating with the Campus Climate Survey and the UC Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES). However, it is a huge effort so may depend on funding and staffing.

For the MyVoice Survey, we used behavior-based questions, rather than terms like “sexual harassment” or “sexual assault,” in order to mitigate participants’ varying understandings of what these terms cover. The chart below details the behaviors that were funneled into each category. Note that these categories do not exactly match formal definitions in the UC Policy on SVSH.

IIn order to ensure a high standard of data quality, maintain the confidentiality of all of the survey participants, and ensure the objectivity of the results, UC Berkeley has selected NORC at the University of Chicago to develop, conduct, analyze, and report the results for the survey. This will allow for a completely independent evaluation of the UC Berkeley campus experience.

NORC at the University of Chicago is a non-profit social science research organization. Since 1941, NORC has been serving the public interest and improving lives through objective social science research that supports informed decision making. For more information, see www.norc.org

The MyVoice survey is not a self-standing, out-of-the-box instrument that can be administered in other settings. It is customized to the Berkeley campus and is also just part of a broader initiative of readying the community for a survey and acting on the results. If you are looking to launch a similar initiative on another campus, we have put together a Survey Implementation and Lessons Learned document For UC Berkeley departments or organizations hoping to use this or another survey to find out more about the internal experience of your community, we suggest meeting with someone from the prevention team at the PATH to Care Center, the SVSH Advisor, and or the Division of Equity & Inclusion to discuss tools for bringing about culture change.

The MyVoice survey is not a self-standing, out-of-the-box instrument that can be administered in other settings. It is customized to the Berkeley campus and is also just part of a broader initiative of readying the community for a survey and acting on the results. If you are looking to launch a similar initiative on another campus, we have put together a Survey Implementation and Lessons Learned document For UC Berkeley departments or organizations hoping to use this or another survey to find out more about the internal experience of your community, we suggest meeting with someone from the prevention team at the PATH to Care Center, the SVSH Advisor, and or the Division of Equity & Inclusion to discuss tools for bringing about culture change.

As soon as we received results, we convened a group of campus leader to interpret the findings and suggest associated action steps. A summary of these proposed next steps can be found here. If you would like to give us feedback about the suggestions, we welcome it, and are collecting it here. Fall 2018 will be spent collecting feedback and fine tuning the action steps for campus-wide buyin. We hope to begin implementation in Spring 2019.

UC Berkeley will be receiving the de-identified data from NORC in October. There will be opportunities for communities to engage with the data specific to them.

The survey uses the time frame of “in the last 5 years or since coming to Berkeley, whichever was more recent.” This time frame is appropriate given the plan to administer the survey again in a few years without collecting duplicate data. It limits the incidents that survivors must recount or relive in taking the survey, and it prioritizes the more recent incidents that are more relevant to prevention efforts on campus currently.

It was important to us that any member of us who wanted to participate in the survey could do so, but it was also important to have statistically reliable, representative data. Thus, we embedded in the campus-wide, or “census” survey, a targeted, demographically balanced sample. This “sample within census” design is a mechanism for dealing with selection bias in the population of people who opted to take the survey. To construct the sample, NORC selected separate representative samples from each of the four campus populations (undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff), demographically stratified by gender, race/ethnicity, and university division.

The MyVoice Survey is different from a broader climate survey because it focused specifically on experiences, beliefs, norms and knowledge regarding sexual violence and sexual harassment (SVSH). Though SVSH impacts general climate, and general climate impacts the likelihood of SVSH occurring, there is simply too much information needed for the university to productively make change on these issues for the surveys to be combined.

The MyVoice survey was designed specifically for our campus, so comparing its results to those from surveys conducted on other campuses is not straightforward. That said, the prevalence rates for harm experienced by students are comparable to those found from related surveys on other college campuses across the country. We do not know of similar data from other universities about faculty and staff rates, so we are unable to compare them.

Yes! For your convenience, the survey has been translated into Spanish and Simplified Chinese. The survey could only be offered in a limited number of languages, and the languages selected are most commonly used among community members with limited English proficiency. If you know someone for whom this would be helpful, please share this information. In order to participate in one of those languages, please e-mail: MyVoice@norc.org

Your unique PIN was sent to your UC Berkeley email address, along with the survey link. You can search for "MyVoice" or "norc.org" in your Berkeley inbox to locate that email.

Most people will likely complete the survey in between 20 and 45 minutes. You can complete the survey all at once or pause at any time and return back at a later time to complete. If you exit partway through, your previous responses will be saved and you will be started up and the point at which you left off. Since everyone’s experience is different, the time it takes to tell your story may be different.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the MyVoice Survey.

UC Berkeley wants to offer you and everyone the safest environment possible to learn, work, and thrive. In order to do that, they must understand the current environment by asking YOU. Your experience and you voice matters, and it should be heard. 

There are a wide range of experiences on campus. NORC and UC Berkeley want to hear all of them. A diverse and wide range of experience will provide the best data and analyses possible. No matter what your experiences have been so far, your voice matters.

While full participation is encouraged, you may skip any item that you do not feel comfortable answering. All data you provide will be de-identified and any results will be reported to UC Berkeley in the aggregate form only. UC Berkeley will not be able to tie any responses to an individual.

There are three likely reasons why you have not received an invitation. 

1. We may not have emailed you yet! Staff invitations will start on January 16, and should all have been delivered by January 18. Student and faculty invitations will start on January 22 and should all have been delivered by January 24. If you haven’t received an invitation by the above dates, please reach out to us at MyVoice@norc.org.
2. You were under 18 as of January 1, 2018. We are not able to include participants under 18. If you believe you were excluded in error, please reach out to us at MyVoice@norc.org.
3. We did not have a valid email address for you. Please reach out to us at MyVoice@norc.org.

If you are not affiliated with UC Berkeley in any way (student, faculty or staff), they may have reached out to you in error. Please call 1-866-230-6672 or email us at MyVoice@norc.org to notify that you are not the intended survey participant.

If you have questions for UC Berkeley, you can email: svshadvisor@berkeley.edu.

For survey questions, call 1-866-230-6672 or email MyVoice@norc.org.