Help with Survey Questions for Graduate Research Students/Assistants

[sambaprof]

I am in the process of creating anonymous survey responses from the graduate (PhD, MS) research students/assistants, who I am
advising/supervising and working with me in the lab.  My objective in this survey is to check their motivation level and the lab/work environment from
their perspective.

Could you help create the survey questions / design the survey from the above objective standpoint or anything that would help with successful PhD/MS student research mentoring/supervision.

[Puget]

Unless you have an exceptionally big lab, the students are unlikely to feel like this is truly anonymous (and will be reluctant to give honest answers), especially if you include any written responses. That's why this is usually done at a program/department level, not for one lab. I

If you go ahead with doing this for just your lab, use rating scales only-- e.g., "How motivated to you feel in your work in the lab? Rated from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very).

Ideally, you'd have a lab culture where students can talk openly about motivation and lab environment with you.

[mamselle]

If this is a requirement of your school, you should be checking with them to help you do your work, not an anonymous forum.

For one thing, if they really do require it, they're going to have specific ideas about how it should look.

For another, as stated above, if they don't require it, it's because they've discovered it's useless.

People say what they want you to hear and go one level deeper into burying what they know you won't want to hear.

It will have just the reverse response of what you're hoping for.

Take folks to coffee and just listen to them every now and again. Pay attention to stray remarks. Take on board comments you overhear and think about them.

Human beings aren't plants whose soil humidity, xylem and phloem transport speeds, and nodal losses can be measured objectively.

Good luck.

M.

[fizzycist]

I saw this advertised on Twitter. It looks a bit too long
but I thought it would be interesting to try an abbreviated version for my group, but haven't gotten around to it. If you use it, let us know how it goes.

https://www.rockefeller.edu/research/uploads/www.rockefeller.edu/sites/8/2018/04/AnonymousLabSurvey_Vosshall.pdf

[Puget]

I saw this advertised on Twitter. It looks a bit too long
but I thought it would be interesting to try an abbreviated version for my group, but haven't gotten around to it. If you use it, let us know how it goes.

https://www.rockefeller.edu/research/uploads/www.rockefeller.edu/sites/8/2018/04/AnonymousLabSurvey_Vosshall.pdf

This has some good questions, but from a survey design perspective it is way too long, with too many over-lapping questions. And again, unless you have a *very* large lab group (and this survey looks like it was designed for a large biomedical lab group), I would worry that lab members would think the open-ended responses might be identifiable (and they would likely be right if they provided much information).