Times Higher Education Best University Workplace Survey 2014 results

It would be very interesting to see all the data in an Excel spreadsheet so we could see where our individual institutions sit on various measures. Please consider providing this!

Hi Lee - we're not publishing data by institution at this stage, not least because we have to be fair about sample sizes, which vary in each case. This is something we would like to do next year if possible, as the survey grows. We will, however, be producing a series of stories in coming weeks and months digging into the data at a sector-wide level to highlight issues and trends that we have not been able to get into in this week's feature. John

I agree with Lee. As a publication for the higher education sector you really should allow your data and conclusions to be scrutinised. I would be interested in seeing the full dataset - if you are so worried about sample size then your "top five" is meaningless and these results should not have been published at all.

Hi Mario. That refers to the three additional Top 5 institution tables that are published online (but not in the magazine). You can get them by clicking the link at the bottom of the "Top achievers" box (above). Chris

This is an interesting piece, but the numbers in the survey are tiny. Therefore I don't think the institutonal data is doing this any favours. I know that you make little of the institutional tables - but you have called it 'best university workplace' and Huddersield (plus the Duke of York) have certainly picked that up without mentioning that 98 institutions are excluded because they didn't get to 25 responses. With your publication threshold set at 25 responses (irrespective of the size of university?) that means as few as 0.9% of Huddersfield's staff could have completed the survey and 0.3% of UCL were needed to get them into the tables.

Hi Mike - yes the sample sizes vary significantly at institution level, which is why in this pliot year we haven't published significant amounts of data at this scale. But I don't agree that 4,500 is a tiny sample, even allowing for the fact that it is 1% of a (very large) HE workforce. How many people do you think YouGov polls when it predicts the outcome of a general election (total voting population 45-50 million)? I've just googled it and the answer is typically around 2,000 - less than half of what we've got here. All our analysis suggests this is a good, representative sample across geography and role so we think the national trends we highlight are very worthwhile. John

I agree with Lee and Bob about wanting to see the tablulations by institution and hope you will reconsider making these figures available. It will be easy for us to gauge the reliability of the institution-specific figures if you give either the number of responses from each institution on which their percentages are based or even just the actual number of responses to each question.

It is a disgrace that league tables for students and research etc.. are published in full. But the "Best Worplace" survey completed by 4500 staff in 150 institutions is hidden. The suspicion will be that some leading universities do not like the outcome. Come clean on this if your reputation is to remain intact.

Hi Craven - on the contrary we are being responsible in publishing national results but not complete listings at an institutional level. There's nothing inconsistent in this approach, as dictated by sample sizes, and certainly none of the 'pressure' that you imagine. As before, this is a pilot year and we hope to be able to publish more 'local' results next year, sample sizes allowing. John

It seems the real story here is the one not being reported in any detail. Giving us the top 5 from only 52 institutions with enough data is not particulary useful so why publish it at all, unless you are prepared to publish the whole list? This particulary jumps out when you also choose to highlight the disturbing lack of faith in some of our HEI leadership teams at the moment. Perhaps THE could do a bit more to give a voice to all those staff who say here that they don't have one at the moment, and provide some exposure to these bullying and harassing cultures that are being reported. All in all, I find this report very disturbing for the sector.

I am not sure it would be appropriate to share all institution results openly, with such diversity. However, we do see staff engagement here as very important and would find it useful to have sight of our own institution results - to benchmark with our internal engagement data, and to focus our future developments.. Who can we contact to obtain this information? Thanks