the survey pocket
Surveying the people you work beside.
A survey of colleagues at your own site is rarely returned because of the questions. It is returned because the folder cannot show that saying no was genuinely free, and cannot tell anonymity apart from confidentiality. Those are two different promises, they cost different things, and a reviewer can spot which one you are actually making from the recruitment plan alone. This piece builds the survey pocket in the order the board reads it.
Olivia Tremblay, MSN, RN · filed 23 August 2026
Surveying colleagues is allowed and common. The board's question is whether declining is free of consequence and whether responses can be traced back. Answer both in writing: who recruits, who never sees responses, and whether the file is anonymous or merely confidential.
Why does surveying your own colleagues change the file?
Because the ordinary safeguards of a survey assume a stranger is asking. When the person asking is on the schedule, sits in the huddle, or writes part of the evaluation, three things shift at once: refusal becomes visible, responses become socially costly, and a small sample becomes identifiable by department and role even without a name on it.
The regulation speaks to the first of those directly. There is only one setting in which consent may properly be sought: one that gives somebody genuine space to think the decision over, while holding down any chance of coercion or undue influence — the requirement laid out at 46.116(a)(2). Then, among the criteria for approval, 46.111(a)(3) asks the board — when it judges whether selection is equitable — to be particularly cognizant of research reaching people exposed to exactly those pressures. Colleagues are not a listed vulnerable category. Colleagues who report to the person running the project frequently behave like one, and the board is entitled to say so.
Herzing's own Research Protocol Application makes the parallel point about its own community in a single parenthesis: where participants would be Herzing's faculty, staff or those enrolled with the university, the form itself notes that full board review is required. That instruction is about Herzing's constituents rather than your employer's, but it tells you how this board thinks about surveying people inside an institution you are part of. Expect the same scrutiny pointed at your unit.
Is a staff survey exempt, and which route are you claiming?
Survey work is one of the categories that can be exempt, but 45 CFR 46.104(d)(2) makes exemption conditional, and there are three separate doors. Claim one of them by name in the application rather than asserting exemption generally:
- Responses are not readily identifiable. Nothing you record lets identity be readily ascertained — not straight off the response, and not through identifiers linked to it. This is the cleanest door and, for reasons below, the most expensive.
- Disclosure would not put anyone at risk. Even where responses are identifiable, letting them out beyond the study would not reasonably put a participant at risk of civil or criminal liability, or be damaging to reputation, employability, educational advancement or financial standing. Read that one word again before claiming this door for a survey about staffing, incivility, unsafe practice or leadership.
- Identifiable, with limited board review. Responses are identifiable and the board conducts a limited review to make the privacy and confidentiality determination required by 46.111(a)(7).
Herzing's current Statement of Principles summarises the exempt categories at a level above these subparagraphs — surveys and interviews appear as a category, without the three conditions spelled out. The conditions still govern, because the regulation governs. Writing the file as though the category alone is enough is how a survey of a workforce ends up on the full board's agenda instead of a reviewer's desk. Which paths this board recognises and how it wants them argued belongs in Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal; the underlying test does not move.
There is also the prior question of whether the work is research at all. A short pulse survey used to steer a local process change, never intended to generalise beyond the unit, may sit on the improvement side of Herzing's own research / evidence-based practice / quality improvement distinctions. That call still belongs to the board; the review levels piece traces how it gets reached.
Are you promising anonymity, or only confidentiality?
These get used as synonyms in recruitment emails and they are nothing alike. One is a property of the data; the other is a promise about behaviour. Pick deliberately, because each buys something and gives something up.
| Anonymous | Confidential | |
|---|---|---|
| What it means | Nobody, including you, can link a response to a person. No name, no email capture, no login trail, no code held anywhere | You can link a response to a person, and you undertake not to |
| What it buys | The strongest answer to the coercion question, and the most direct route to the first exemption door | Follow-up, reminders to non-responders, matched pre and post measures, and the ability to withdraw a specific response |
| What it costs | No reminders to individuals, no matched pairs, no withdrawal after submission — because you cannot find the response again | A key exists. Every question about storage, access and destruction now applies to it, and the exemption argument gets harder |
| Where it breaks | Small units. Role plus shift plus tenure can identify one person; an open comment box does it faster | When the key lives in the same system as the responses, or when the person holding it also manages the respondents |
The most common defect is a file that promises anonymity while the survey platform quietly records work email addresses or device identifiers, or while demographic questions cut the sample down to one. If you want the anonymity claim to hold, turn identity capture off in the tool, say so in the application, and keep the demographic questions coarse enough that no cell contains a single person.
Anonymity also changes how consent gets documented. The documentation rules at 46.117(c)(1)(i) let a board set aside the requirement for a signature where the signed page would end up being the one thing tying a respondent to the study, and where a confidentiality breach is the principal risk — precisely the situation an anonymous workforce survey creates. A written statement about the research may still be required under 46.117(c)(2). In practice that means an information sheet at the head of the instrument in place of a signature page, and the folder should request the waiver in so many words rather than hoping nobody notices the absent signatures.
How do you take voluntariness out of the manager's hands?
By designing the recruitment so that the answer to "would anyone know if I declined?" is structurally no, and then writing that structure down. Herzing's Research Protocol Application asks you to describe how participants will be selected or recruited, and this is the paragraph that answer should contain.
- Someone other than the supervisor invites. If the project lead has any evaluative authority over the invitees, the invitation should come from a neutral party — an education office, a shared inbox, a posted notice — not from the person who writes the schedule.
- No roster of respondents. Nobody in the chain of command should be able to see who answered. Say who could technically see it in the platform, and how that access is closed.
- Not in a meeting, not on the clock in a room together. Distributing tablets at a staff meeting looks efficient and reads as a roll call.
- Reminders to everyone or to nobody. Individually targeted reminders are only possible if the survey is not anonymous, and they are the moment a reluctant colleague feels watched.
- Compensation kept modest and stated. Herzing's form asks whether participants receive compensation and, if so, to detail it. An incentive large enough to be hard to refuse is undue influence wearing a friendly hat.
- An explicit no-penalty sentence in the invitation and on the instrument: taking part is voluntary, declining carries no consequence for standing or assignment, and no list of who responded will exist.
What the survey pocket carries into the folder
Herzing's Research Protocol Application checklist is short and unusually concrete. It asks for the application with the required signatures, a copy of all questionnaires and surveys where used, the informed consent documents that participants will receive before taking part, and — as its own line — material describing how privacy will be maintained and confidentiality kept. It also asks for a copy of CITI certification, which Herzing notes is free for its affiliates through Canvas, plus any external board's application and approval letter and, where applicable, a letter of approval from the program chair of the affiliated institution.
So the pocket that survives a first pass holds: the instrument exactly as it will appear, question for question, including the demographics; the consent or information sheet, matched word for word to the instrument's version; the recruitment text as it will be sent, with the no-penalty sentence in it; the confidentiality description, naming the platform, who holds any key, where responses rest, and when they are destroyed; site permission from whoever can actually authorise access to the workforce, which is worked through in the site permission letter piece; and training certificates for everyone named. If a second board at the employer also has to see it, the two-boards piece covers the order.
Both Herzing applications also carry a clause worth reading before you plan any dissemination: information collected from Herzing's own community is treated as proprietary, and publications or presentations may not identify or implicate the university.
What to do next
Draft the recruitment email before the instrument. It is the shortest document in the pocket and the one that decides the coercion question; if you cannot write it without implying that participation is expected, the design needs changing rather than the wording.
Would you rather the pocket were handled? Send it to the free application review: you get a written first reading of the instrument, the consent and the recruitment plan, marking what a reviewer would stop at. After that we draft each document, keep the versions matched, and answer whatever comes back from the board until approval is in hand. Ownership of the study and everything it produces never leaves you, and the verdict is always the board's alone. The four tabs, with the points where you can take the folder back, sit on the how it works page; short-form answers sit on the FAQ.
Sources
- Herzing University Institutional Review Board — the board's page, its forms and its meeting calendar.
- Herzing University IRB Research Protocol Application (PDF) — the submission checklist, the participant questions and the recruitment prompt.
- Herzing University IRB Statement of Principles (PDF) — the exempt and expedited summaries and the approval criteria.
- Herzing University IRB, Getting Started: Read this First (PDF) — which application to complete and where to send it.
- 45 CFR 46.104(d)(2) — the three conditions attached to the survey and interview exemption.
- 45 CFR 46.111 and 45 CFR 46.116 — equitable selection, coercion and undue influence, and the consent requirements.
- 45 CFR 46.117(c) — waiving documentation of consent where the signature would be the only link.
- CITI Program, Human Subjects Research — the social-behavioural-educational course most survey work sits under.
Named forms, routes and prerequisites shift between editions; verify every Herzing-specific item against Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal. This practice is independent and not affiliated with Herzing University or its Institutional Review Board.
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