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Created in 2006, the C - Change Initiative is a consortium of medical schools devoted to achieving the realization of the full potential of all faculty, including under-represented minority (URM) and women faculty, by changing the culture of academic medicine through research and action. We have investigated these human capital issues using a multi-method research design.
In an initial phase, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with men and women faculty.1-10 These interview data served as the basis for the construction of a quantitative survey instrument, the C - Change Faculty Survey (CFS), that systematically explores and documents the experiences of medical school faculty and the organizational culture in their academic health centers. Using the CFS, data were then collected from a large, randomly selected, national sample of medical school faculty, oversampling women and under-represented in medicine minority faculty. The 26 United States medical schools that participated in the survey were selected by constrained random sampling and are representative of the nation.
The C - Change Faculty Survey (CFS) assesses medical faculty perceptions of their institution and professional experiences. It consists of 117 questions that assess levels of vitality, trust, competition, feelings of being valued, gender and diversity equity, as well as other constructs related to the organizational culture for faculty. It also collects data on faculty roles (e.g., percent time spent in research, education, administration, clinical time and faculty perception of their school’s support for career development, mentoring and work-life management issues). It assesses burnout and faculty commitment to their own institution as well as intention to leave academic medicine.
Factor analysis identified several key subscales with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from .76 to .90. Subscales used in C - Change analyses include: engagement; self-efficacy in career advancement; relatedness and inclusion; institutional support; values alignment; ethical culture; gender equity; equity for under-represented minority faculty; and work-life support. Institutions wishing to use the instrument may implement all or parts of the survey depending on the school’s particular needs and the desired focus of the change effort.
The CFS is fielded electronically and takes about 20 minutes to complete. The survey is hosted on a secure external website and administered by the C - Change office at Brandeis University to assure confidentiality of responses and help achieve a high response rate. Data are provided to schools in aggregate to protect the anonymity of faculty respondents. C - Change can field the survey to the entire faculty or assist with a faculty sampling plan. National comparison data are provided to individual schools to help identify similarities or differences of their institution compared to national data. The C - Change dataset is the largest of its type, capturing the experience of 511 URM faculty, as well as majority female and male faculty, across several career stages. Additionally, it includes 257 primary care physicians.
The CFS contains questions that allow exploration of important questions that lie at the core of both the development of human capital (e.g., trust, support, perception of opportunity, self-efficiency) as well as the waste of human capital (e.g., dissatisfaction, burnout, desire to leave academic medicine), and can be an important tool for medical schools wishing to create a productive environment where all faculty can thrive.
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