Westminster to Run VITAE Culture, Environment and Development in Academic Research Survey (CEDARS) from April to May.

CEDARS is a new, national survey from Vitae which seeks to gather anonymous data on the working conditions of researchers and their managers, as well as on career aspirations and opportunities for career development. The new survey integrates key questions from the CROS (Careers in Research Online Survey) and PIRLS (Principal Investigators and Research Leaders Survey), which have been run nationally by Vitae since 2009 and 2011 respectively and have now been replaced by CEDARS.

Following the publication of the revised Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers in September 2019, CEDARS will provide institutions with critical information on their progress in implementing the Concordat’s principles, highlighting areas for particular attention. Responses to questions on career development opportunities will help shape the university’s Researcher Development Programme going forward and responses to questions on the research environment and culture at Westminster will provide a baseline for improvement. The data from this survey will be used across the Research Office, the Researcher Development Working Group and our Colleges to inform the support on offer, so we would much appreciate your taking twenty minutes to fill out the anonymous survey as comprehensively as possible. If you would like to see how data from previous surveys has been used to track progress in research nationally, please find Vitae’s, ‘5 Steps Forward’ report here, which delineates how the revised Concordat was shaped by researchers’ thoughts and opinions on research in the UK.

Colleagues will be receiving email invitations to complete the survey over the next few weeks and will have until 31^st May to do so.