Your school is participating in HMS to better understand faculty and staff well-being and perceptions of student behavioral and mental health needs.  You and other employees at your institution have been invited to participate in this study to give your perspectives on the current state of student mental health and well-being, as well as to share your own experience.

If you received emails to complete the HMS survey, it means that your school provided our team with a list of faculty and staff members. This list only included your email address for the purpose of survey recruitment.  Some schools choose people randomly; some schools choose everyone. Your school has determined that they may share this data with our study team, considering federal, state, and institutional policies and regulations.  For specifics on your school’s decision, you may contact the researchers at [email protected], or reach out to the contact person form your school. That individual is listed at the end of the consent form at the beginning of the survey.

If your school provided you with a general URL to access the survey, no information about you was given to the HMS research team.

Over the course of the one-month data collection period, faculty and staff who have not completed the survey will receive several reminders.

If you wish to opt out (and stop receiving emails), there are two approaches:

• Follow the survey link to the consent form and click “No, I do not consent to participate in this study.”
• Click on the “Opt-Out” link located at the bottom of your recruitment or reminder email.

This survey was designed to protect your privacy and confidentiality. How that is done depends on the protocol your school chose. One is designated “anonymous” and the other “confidential”. The consent form presented at the beginning of the survey will indicate whether your school chose an anonymous or  confidential approach to survey administration.

In the case of the confidential protocol,

• Your answers to the survey will be stored in a file that is separate from your first name and email address.
• The data from this study, without any identifiable information, are stored in a secure digital location by the research team for future research purposes
• Any reports or articles written about this survey will describe people’s answers all together (in the aggregate or as a whole), and will contain no information that could allow someone to identify you
• Participating institutions will receive a de-identified data set and will not be given access to individually identifiable survey data.

In the case of the anonymous protocol,

• There is no personally identifiable information associated with survey responses.
• If you want to enter the incentives drawing, we ask that you provide your first name and/or email address.

We invite faculty and staff at your institution to participate in this voluntary study. We welcome a diverse perspective! 

Please try copying and pasting your link into a new window of your current web-browser or use a different web-browser altogether. If this still is giving you trouble, please email [email protected].

Most often, no.  But most schools opt into a national sweepstakes so that their participants have the chance to win one of two $500 Amazon gift cards or one of ten $100 Amazon gift cards. The national prize drawing will be in the summer.  If you are doing this survey because you received a link in an email, you don’t need to do anything to enter prize drawings. In that case, all invited faculty and staff at all institutions participating in this study are automatically entered to win the national sweepstakes prizes, even if you don’t fill out the survey.

In addition, your school may have their own drawing for additional prizes. The consent form at the beginning of the survey states all incentives for your school. If you received an email with a link to the survey, it also includes information about incentives.

If you entered the survey through a single, broadly advertised URL, you will need to provide your first name and/or email address to enter the drawings. That is done by clicking on a link in the survey. That link leads to a separate webpage that exists solely to gather contact information for the purpose of awarding prizes.

Here are a few paths to take:

• Resources for faculty and staff support are listed at the top of every page of your survey. Additional mental health resources on your campus may also be listed at the end of your survey.
• You can reach out to [email protected], and we can provide you this list of mental health resources on your campus directly. We’re also happy to put you in touch with the primary contact of this study at your specific institution if you want to speak with someone directly about any questions/concerns you have.

No.  To maintain the validity of our survey design, we do not allow for editing of responses that have already been submitted.

No, unfortunately. We use an anonymized method of sending email invitations to protect your confidentiality and keep your contact information separate from your survey information. Because of that, there is no way for us to track down your original survey and send you a new link. We apologize for the inconvenience and greatly appreciate your interest in participating!

We welcome feedback about our study! Please fill out our brief, anonymous anonymous feedback form to provide your suggestions for improving the Healthy Minds Study.