Equal Opportunities and Diversity Unit

Surveys on diversity and students' experiences of discrimination

An important foundation for diversity work at the university are the needs and concerns that students and employees formulate based on their different life situations and experiences. A good database that reflects the diversity of the interviewees and makes discrimination experiences and possible discrimination risks visible is also an essential basis for effective protection against discrimination.
The Equal Opportunities and Diversity Unit has developed a questionnaire for this purpose in the project "Conception of survey modules on student diversity" (see below): It contains quality-assured questions about the students' life situation and their experiences of disadvantage/discrimination. In addition, it asks about the use of counselling services, stress, reasons for prolonging studies and thoughts of dropping out. It also enables the respondents to make a differentiated assessment of the study conditions.
The use of the questionnaire so far has shown that it can also be used for decentralised quality management within the framework of system accreditation (especially for criterion 6.1 "Ensuring equal opportunities"). The survey results support the development of tailored measures, e.g. in the areas of student recruitment, design of the study entry phase or improvement of protection against discrimination (e.g. survey ZEWIL Nov. 2021).

Our offer: Support with facility-specific surveys

We gladly support faculties and central institutions in the implementation of surveys on diversity and experiences of discrimination, especially in the area of studies and teaching. We provide advice on application possibilities, organisation and workload, accompany the implementation and evaluation of the survey and advise on the development of measures following the results.

In the context of the Diversity Audit (2016-2019), the University of Göttingen has worked to improve the data on equal opportunities and diversity. In the project "Conception of survey modules on diversity", an instrument was developed to collect data on the diversity of students and their experiences of discrimination. For the questionnaire design, standards for collecting anti-discrimination and equality data were taken into account. The questionnaire contains already tested and thus quality assured items from other surveys as well as some own further developments.
In order to survey the diversity of students, the diversity dimensions of age, gender, disability, ethnicity/language/religion, sexual orientation, educational background as well as care responsibility for children or adult relatives are taken into account, as well as experiences of discrimination and privilege that shape the background experiences and life situations of students.