For immediate release:
June 25, 2009

For more information, contact:
David Green
Association of Research Libraries
202-296-2296 x136
climatequal@arl.org

Call for Participation in ClimateQUAL™: Organizational Climate and Diversity Assessment 2010

Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) invites participation in the ClimateQUAL™ survey in 2010. ClimateQUAL™: Organizational Climate and Diversity Assessment (OCDA) is an online survey that collects information about staff perceptions concerning (a) the organization’s commitment to the principles of diversity, (b) staff perceptions of organizational policies and procedures, and (c) staff attitudes. ARL and the University of Maryland (UM) Industrial/Organizational Psychology (I/OP) program have partnered to offer this protocol to the library community. ClimateQUAL™ is currently seeking eight to ten US or Canadian institutions to participate in 2010. Please note that participants need to survey at least 50 part-time or full-time employees.

Background—The Healthy Organization

In 2007, the UM I/OP program and ARL began collaborating to create a capability to measure organizational climate and diversity, based on work undertaken at UM since 1999.

The resulting ClimateQUAL™ instrument contains questions designed to provide an understanding of how organizational procedures and policies affect the organization’s climate and the impact that this has, in turn, on service quality in a library setting. The survey addresses a number of climate issues, such as diversity, teamwork, learning, and fairness as well as current managerial practices, and staff attitudes and beliefs.

To date, 23 institutions have partnered in the development of ClimateQUAL™. This initial research has led to the development of the model of the “healthy organization” and scales that help advance understanding of the relative conditions within the organization.

Participant Responsibilities

ClimateQUAL™ is an assessment tool administered by the ARL Statistics and Measurement program. Work with participants is ongoing to develop “best practice” strategies for using the survey results as a tool for organizational and service improvement.

Libraries participating in ClimateQUAL™ in 2010 are asked for the following support:

• Project participation fee of $5,000 per participant

• Assignment of a contact person to work with ClimateQUAL™ throughout the project

• Commitment for the contact person to attend group meetings held in conjunction with the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference and/or ALA Midwinter Meeting on Friday morning

• Commitment to repeat the survey periodically to measure the impact of improvement strategies over time

For More Information

Detailed information about the ClimateQUAL™ protocol and further background—including recent articles, an FAQ, a 15-minute podcast by Professor Paul Hanges describing the theory behind ClimateQUAL™, reports about the UM Libraries’ survey results for 2000 and 2004, and a bibliography of relevant research publications—can be found at http://www.climatequal.org/.

Interested participants can meet with ARL staff in July during the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.

For more information or to express interest in participating in spring 2010, please e-mail climatequal@arl.org.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.