You have questions, we have answers
Based on our experience managing the panel, we’ve assembled a list of common questions. If we’ve missed your important question, let us know at iumrktg@iu.edu.
Panel impact
Market insights help IU administrators make informed decisions. Hearing from you is important and helps us minimize risks, reveal hidden opportunities, and prove return on investment.
The panel gives us the ability to garner feedback from alumni and friends quickly and easily. For example, panel response rates average about 80 percent (compared to 10 percent for non-panel, random-sample surveys conducted during the same time period). The panel also gives you an ongoing opportunity to provide candid feedback on IU’s strategic directions, products, and services.
Yes! We can’t promise IU will act on everything you recommend, but we can promise we’ll listen to you and share your concerns. Just keep in mind that responses may not be immediate.
Every survey is different and produces different results. As a IU Panel participant, you will receive a respondent summary after each survey you complete so you can see your impact and understand the action being taken.
Panel participation
Most likely you engaged with IU in a way we want to know more about!
We are currently recruiting panel participants by invitation only, but we’re happy to add people if they meet our criteria. Please have the interested party contact us at iumrktg@iu.edu.
You are one of about 1,200 panelists. Most panelists are IU volunteers, alumni, and/or donors. Our panel’s composition closely matches the demographics of the larger alumni and donor population.
Yes! Your opinions matter to us and we trust that you will never share logos, taglines, concepts, survey questions, results, or other ideas outside the IU family.
Welcome! We need IU Panel participants from all IU campuses to inform our research.
No, we do not pay panelists for their opinions. However, we will send you occasional tokens of our thanks and include your name in drawings.
Survey topics
We work with administrators across IU Advancement to identify market research needs and offer a variety of opportunities for panel feedback.
If you have an idea for a survey, you can send your suggestions to iumrktg@iu.edu at any time. Please be as specific as possible!
The panel is run by IU Advancement (a collaborative partnership between the IU Alumni Association and IU Foundation) for marketing research purposes, not solicitation. However, we may sometimes ask you to weigh in on fundraising campaigns and concepts.
No. Because our research activities occur for the sole purpose of improving our own products and processes, our efforts are usually exempt from IRB approval. This is not academic research that will be published.
We ask about things that are important to us, and it is important for us to hear from those with limited interest or experiences. So, your feedback is still valuable!
However, if you decide not to participate in a survey, you can opt out of the survey using the link at the bottom of your survey invitation or reminder.
Receiving surveys
You should expect to get a new panel survey invitation six to ten times per year.
Panel emails will always begin with “IU Panel” in the subject line. Communications will generally come from “Jessica Will” or “IU Market Research.” If you ever have reason to suspect that a panel communication is fraudulent, please forward the communication to us at iumrktg@iu.edu so we can verify its authenticity.
Priorities dictate our schedule, so survey topics and fielding dates change. However, you can view our survey schedule to see what has been fielded to date.
Your participation in the panel will not preclude you from receiving other non-panel, IU-related surveys. If we are aware of others, we’ll do our best to avoid burdening you with our requests at the same time. Please know, however, you may get other requests alongside ours.
We receive most of our responses within the first 24 hours, but we usually send two reminders to those who do not complete a survey. You will typically have about two weeks to respond before a survey closes.
Taking surveys
Our surveys are typically short in duration: about 5 to 10 minutes.
Yes. We currently field surveys using either emails or text messages. You can use mobile, tablet, laptop, or desktop devices to complete surveys.
If you cannot access your IU Panel survey, please email iumrktg@iu.edu with the following info: your name, a brief description of your problem and the circumstances under which it occurred, the kind of device and browser you were using at the time of difficulty, and anything else that might be helpful for us to know. We’ll do our best to get your issue resolved quickly.
Yes. We try to keep our surveys short, but you can revisit your survey responses until the survey closes or you submit your final answers.
Our survey software typically saves answers by page, which is why we break up questions into multiple pages. You can assume that answers will be saved for any pages where you’ve clicked “next” or “submit.” If you stop responding in the middle of a page, only those answers completed before your last page will be recorded.
After clicking the “submit” button to record your final answers, you should see a message confirming your submission. If you have any concerns, contact us at iumrktg@iu.edu. We’ll check to make sure your answers were recorded.
If you inadvertently submitted your answers before intending to do so, contact us at iumrktg@iu.edu. We’ll append your survey record.
No. You don’t have to respond to every invitation, although we hope you do! Robust response rates generally lead to greater precision.
Confidentiality
Your feedback is confidential to IU and will never be sold, rented, or given to an outside entity.
You are part of a group that gets to weigh in on concepts that may not be ready for public consumption. Unless given our explicit permission, we trust that you will never share logos, taglines, concepts, survey questions, results, or other ideas outside the IU family.
IU Panel webpages are public because we want you to have access without having to log in. But, they aren’t easily findable through search engines. We’re the first in higher education to create a custom university panel, so we don’t want to heavily advertise what we do and how we do it for our competitors!