1/ UCU free speech survey🧵. It is not good practice to invite people to take part in a survey by telling them what their views should be. One likely effect is to dissuade those who disagree with you from participating, thus biasing the results.
2/ Questions are highly disclosive, taken together they would give a high risk of identifiability. Although questions are optional, this isn't made clear. Given that the ruling faction in the union is hostile to some members, leading to low trust, these considerations are
3/ important. Some reassurance should have been provided that the data and analysis would be handled independently, both to ensure ethical treatment of the data and impartial data analysis.
4/ "The next questions are about your identity". This will obviously antagonise some of the respondents whose academic freedom has been most threatened in recent years.
5/ If you want to know people's response to a statement like this, attributing the statement to a source (e.g. UK govt) will bias how people respond.
6/ Not sure how meaningful this question is.
7/ How did they come up with this list of options? Doesn't include the key threats in my view, and mentioning IHRA but not biological sex and women's rights seems perverse.
8/ List of options continued...
9/ We are generously allowed to make some other suggestions.
10/ The next part is quite repetitive
11/ No "don't know" option, seriously? How many people do you think have seriously engaged with this legislation?
12/ I wonder how they'll analyse this?
13/ Finally, the most important question.
14/ This is a survey designed for propaganda purposes. I hope that people will complete it in order to undermine this. It is unbecoming for an academic union to do bogus "research".
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