|
May
12, 2003
Survey
says … you (pretty much) like us
The surveys have been tallied and, especially for those of us who
work on the CSUS Bulletin, the results are encouraging.
Those who responded to our recent survey about the Bulletin
cite the Bulletin more than any of 11 choices as one of
their top three sources of campus news. Nearly everyone who responded
thinks the newsletter is “very” or “somewhat”
informative and most said it should continue to be printed weekly.
Those results came from both those who chose to fill out the survey
we printed in the Bulletin and online, and those in a randomly
selected group of campus employees.
In all, 76 people filled out the survey. Among them were almost
half of the 100 people randomly selected to receive it. We received
surveys from 41 staff, 28 faculty, two administrators, one student
and four people who checked “other.”
The responses to the question about their “three favorite”
parts of the Bulletin were all over the map, which didn’t
surprise us given the diverse group of people who make up our readership.
Faculty and staff, as we’ve found in prior surveys, simply
have different interests and want different things from their employee
newsletter. As we have before, we’ll try to do some adjusting
to make everyone a bit happier.
In the “least favorite” section, “campus and work
policies” was a popular (unpopular?) choice. But the truth
is that – least favorite or not – such things have to
be shared someplace and the newsletter is an obvious choice.
The space we provided for general comments generated a number of
interesting responses.
Two respondents suggested the Bulletin could be sent via
e-mail. One person suggested the same thing for campus memos. Another
suggested a classified ads section, and yet another urged us to
publicize all job fairs on campus.
We received many positive comments. They included:
- “It’s
great!”
- “As
a staff member I read the Bulletin every week.”
- “I
read it in full!”
- “It
was difficult to choose my favorite topics or my least favorite
topic. I enjoy the Bulletin and find the contents of
interest.”
Of course – you knew this was coming – not everyone thinks
the Bulletin is wonderful.
One respondent checked the box for “essentially useless”
when asked about the Bulletin overall, and two respondents
said it should be eliminated.
The most negative responses didn’t come from our randomly selected
respondents. When we chose to do a random survey, we assumed we would
find people who didn’t read the Bulletin, and that
they would let us know it. But the toughest comments came from the
survey printed in the Bulletin.
One person said the Bulletin was “Lots of wasted print.”
“No imagination!” wrote another respondent. Another wrote
that it was “silly” to do summaries of faculty who were
recently quoted by the media.
Finally, one professor asked us to capitalize days of the week in
the calendar. “It’s hard to teach students to do that
when campus publications violate it.” For the record, the lower-case
days of the week in the calendar is part of the current design rather
than an ongoing error.
Public affairs would like to thank everyone who responded. As usual,
we’ll use the results of the survey to make improvements to
the Bulletin next year. We’ll also combine the results
with results from another survey about the public affairs office as
we consider changes to our efforts.
If you have any questions about the survey or public affairs in general,
contact us at (916) 278-6156 or visit www.csus.edu/pa.
####
|
