Climate Assessment & Data Analysis

Quantitative Assessment

Quantifying people’s experiences, behaviors, perceptions and knowledge is an integral step in understanding and communicating an organization’s climate. Quantitative data can produce a range of actionable findings, from detailed snapshots to nuanced trends across time, depending on the project methodology. Rankin Climate positions its clients to use quantitative data to uncover patterns and draw integrated conclusions across their organizations. Our instruments and methods are the gold standards for measuring organizational and focused climate. Each survey Rankin Climate implements is tailored for the project by expertly assembling and adapting the most well-validated and reliable measures available from the research literature, maintained in our extensive item database. Rankin Climate also employs a variety of other methodologies, including social network analysis and geoinformatics (e.g., hotspot mapping), which can be integrated with climate surveys or implemented as stand-alone methodologies.

Qualitative Assessment

Qualitative data are sometimes wrongly relegated as secondary or supplemental as if they are useful only insofar as they explore or explain quantitative data. Qualitative data help Rankin Climate and its clients move toward the heart of challenges and add critical nuance to otherwise broad and abstract climate issues. Our qualitative research provides valuable and unique perspectives to identify concrete solutions for organizational growth, such as prevention or intervention strategies, communication approaches and strategic planning steps. Rankin Climate employs a variety of qualitative data collection and analysis techniques, including semi-structured interviews, focus groups and archival analysis that can include participatory action research to involve organizational stakeholders in the data collection and analysis process.

Mixed Methods Assessment

Mixed methods research requires specialized skills incorporating qualitative and quantitative traditions in dynamic and deliberate ways to illuminate the scope and experience of climate issues. Mixed methods inquiry involves more than the combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies — it integrates these different forms of inquiry to produce results that would not be possible without both numbers and narratives. Rankin Climate develops tailored approaches to mixed methods on a case-by-case basis. These approaches can include:

    • Sequential designs with qualitative components preceding quantitative components to inform an implementation strategy for large-scale quantitative climate surveys.
    • Sequential designs with qualitative components following quantitative survey components to explain key survey results.
    • Embedded designs with a mixture of quantitative and open-ended qualitative items delivered within a climate survey context.

Data Review & Analysis

Organizations often already have mountains of data to help improve climate and organizational inclusion and belonging. Rankin Climate helps institutions bring that deep data into a useable format that is actionable and allows for proactive change management:

    • Review of Internal Data: Quantitative Summary & Review: Analysis of internal reporting data: Are you engaging in a regular breakdown of what the reporting (and disciplinary) case numbers look like? This data gives a critical snapshot of what incidents and the process looked like. From this, organizations can build a profile of what themes are recurrent in incidents. Additionally, this data can help check for bias in the process, assuming data is being pulled regularly on BIPOC students who engage with the process to examine the fairness in sanctioning and reporting overall. As part of our assessment and data analysis, Rankin can examine your data for you, either on a one-time basis or a regular data check that we provide on a quarterly, twice-annual, or annual basis.
    • Qualitative Summary & Review: Qualitative analysis of internal reporting data: Rankin can also analyze an institution’s sexual misconduct and bias incident reporting over a certain period to pull out themes around resource use, incident profiles, the time between reporting and engagement with the organization when community members are most likely to “ghost” in the process. There is a wealth of data to pull out of the cases themselves. Our qualitative analysis can further help your understanding of what sexual misconduct and bias incidents look like in your organization and how effective your responses have been.