StandPoint Faculty Engagement Survey

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the StandPoint Faculty Engagement Survey?

  In recognition of the key roles faculty play in academic health center performance–including delivering excellent healthcare, conducting ground-breaking research, and teaching the next generation of doctors–the Association of American Medical College (AAMC) created an initiative called StandPoint Faculty Engagement Survey (formerly Faculty Forward) to support medical schools in their efforts to attract and retain the best and brightest academic scientists, educators, and clinicians. StandPoint is a collaborative partnership between the AAMC, member medical schools, and teaching hospitals around the country that is focused on measuring and enhancing faculty engagement.

  StandPoint Faculty Engagement is the largest national faculty workplace survey designed to address the issues unique to faculty engagement in academic medicine. Organizations participate in the StandPoint to identify strengths and development areas enterprise-wide, for each department, and to benchmark with other organizations to share innovative and effective engagement practices.

• Is this the same as the Faculty Vitality Survey?

  No; however, certain items from the Vitality survey will be included as a module to the StandPoint survey for the purpose of longitudinal reporting.

• When will the AAMC StandPoint Faculty Engagement Survey “go live” at IU School of Medicine?

  The survey will be administered this upcoming fall in October 2020.

• What is faculty engagement and why does it matter?

  Engagement is a heightened emotional and intellectual connection that a faculty member has for his/her role, organization, manager, or coworkers that, in turn, influences him/her to apply additional discretionary effort at work (Gibbons, Conference Board, 2007). Research on engagement indicates that the alignment of engagement and contribution has more robust links with retention and performance outcomes due to personal investment in the success of an organization. Engaged individuals:

  • Give more than is expected of them in their workplace and are happy to do so
  • Have a sense of mission and passion that motivate them to give exceptional effort to their work
  • Need the resources, support, and tools from the organization to act on, or drive, their sense of mission and passion

  When action is taken to improve the practices and policies that support the recruitment and retention of faculty, faculty will thrive. Physicians who are engaged with their jobs provide better quality patient care and also foster greater patient satisfaction. More engaged faculty are more likely to remain with the institution.

• Who will participate in the survey?

  All full-time IU School of Medicine faculty members will be invited to take part in the StandPoint Faculty Engagement Survey.

• Confidentiality

  We take a number of steps to ensure confidentiality and protect respondents. Faculty participation is voluntary. Respondents may skip any particular question or discontinue the survey at any time. Individual responses will be kept confidential. To safeguard participants’ identity, the data collection and data analyses will be conducted by two separate offices. The IU Center for Survey Research will administer the survey and return a de-identified respondent data file to FAPD for further reporting. We guarantee that aggregate reports will not include statistical results with less than five respondents—passively identifying individuals within specific units. All qualitative information will be reviewed and redacted for identifying words/phrases.