University Staff Sustainability Survey Data

The survey data were collected for a study examining the sustainability perceptions, motivation, and agency of university faculty and staff members within the context of working life. Data were gathered through an online survey of personnel at the University of Helsinki (UH) in Finland, conducted in two rounds. The first round of the survey took place over four weeks in March-April 2023, and a follow-up survey was conducted in April-June 2023.

A total of 413 faculty and staff members completed the first survey, representing 5% of UH personnel, which totalled approximately 8,600 at the end of 2023. The follow-up survey was completed by 114 participants who had also responded in the first round.

The online survey questionnaire was available in Finnish, Swedish and English and it consisted of a combination of open-ended questions and multiple-choice or scaled questionnaire items. The open-ended questions that initiated the survey were as follows: 1) What does sustainability mean to you? 2) How does sustainability relate, or how could it relate, to your work tasks? The scaled questionnaire items included the Hope Concerning Climate Change Scale (Ojala, 2012, 2015) and the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (Gagné et al., 2015), adapted for the sustainability context.

Background information collected included gender, year of birth, length of service at UH, whether participants were members of the faculty (teaching and research personnel) or staff (expert and support personnel), and follow-up questions to specify their field of work.

The survey 1 questionnaire, including all survey items, can be found in the attached text file (Questionnaire1).

Participants in the first survey were recommended to complete a brief sustainability staff training programme and subsequently respond to a follow-up survey. The follow-up survey included the same questions as the first survey, in addition to questions regarding the staff training programme. The survey 2 additional questions concerning the training programme can be found in the attached text file (Questionnaire2).

Answers to the open-ended questions have been analysed using Atlas.ti, applying qualitative content analysis. Scaled items have been examined through statistical methods using SPSS. Consequently, the data have been stored in .atlasti and .sav formats.