About the Research
What is the research and who is conducting it?
The New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa, the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua, and the New Zealand Secondary Principals’ Council have partnered with the Educator Health and Wellbeing team at Deakin University to be part of Professor Phil Riley’s longitudinal research on primary, secondary, and area school principals and senior leaders' health and wellbeing.
Professor Phil Riley is a member of Deakin University's strategic research centre Research for Educational Impact (REDI).
This will be the last year of the research for NZEI Te Riu Roa members.
This will be the second year of the research for secondary and area school leaders funded by PPTA Te Wehengarua, with one more year in 2022.
The survey is internationally comparable consisting of two internationally norm-referenced methodologies, the COPSOQ II and the AQoL-8D. These are included so that comparisons with the general population worldwide can be made. The methodologies are rigorous and robust.
The research has previously been carried out in Australia, Finland, and Ireland.
The research has full ethics approval and adheres to all Deakin University guidelines.
The primary school principals’ survey is funded by NZEI Te Riu Roa.
The secondary principals’ survey is funded by PPTA Te Wehengarua.
What will I be asked to do?
Participation involves completing a confidential online survey. The questions we will ask cover areas such as your working conditions in detail, quality of life information, school of employment, work satisfaction, workplace discrimination, medication use, frequency of alcohol consumption, and other personal information such as diet and exercise. Most of the questions are compulsory, so you cannot choose to answer only some of the questions.
The collection of this data is necessary to allow the research team to holistically understand the antecedents, and outcomes, of environmental and personal factors relevant to educators' wellbeing. As such, the information you provide will assist in better understanding how we can create an environment conducive to content and healthy school staff at all levels of the system.
If you agree to participate you will be invited to take part again for two follow-up years for participants who begin in 2020, one follow-up if you begin in 2021, and no follow-up if you begin in 2022, unless the research is extended. If the research is extended, we will contact you to invite you to participate.
We will be contacting you in future years to ask you to complete annual updates of the survey, so we ask for your mobile phone number as a secondary means of contacting you if your email address changes. If we are unable to contact you using the email address provided, we may phone or message you a reminder about the annual updates of the survey. Your phone number will be treated as confidential personal information and will be used only to contact you about the survey. It will not be shared or made publicly available in any way.
In the survey, we will ask you to nominate an alternative contact. This person will only be contacted by us only if we lose contact with you in follow-up communications. We will simply inform the alternative contact that we would like to invite you to participate in the research. We will not disclose whether you have previously participated in the research. This is standard practice in longitudinal research. You and your contact person’s privacy are paramount.
How did you get my email address?
The survey launch has been supported by PPTA Te Wehengarua and NZEI Te Riu Roa, who emailed information about the survey to their members. These organisations did not share your email address with us. When you complete the survey for the first time, you will be asked to provide an email address, which we will keep on record and use to contact you about annual follow-up surveys.
How much time will the survey take?
The survey takes about 40 minutes to 1 hour to complete.
You can complete the survey over multiple sessions. You don’t have to fill it out all at once. For every page you complete, and click “Next”, your responses are automatically saved. Therefore, there is no "Back" button. You can leave the partially complete survey at any time and resume your progress by logging back on using your email address and your chosen password.
Will the survey be confidential?
The privacy of participants is kept strictly confidential and no individual or school will be identifiable in any reporting of the results. Your data is not accessible to anyone but the researchers and is de-identified before any analysis.
All data is stored in our secure servers in password-protected and encrypted files for at least 5 years. Identified data will never be released or available under any circumstances.
Details about the data management of your personal information at Deakin University can be found in the Plain Language Statement or on the Deakin University Human Ethics website.
What will the data gathered in the survey be used for?
The data and evidence gathered will be used to inform:
Published articles in educational and policy journals as well as reports for industry bodies, organisations, employers, and policymakers.
A research report will be available through PPTA Te Wehengarua or NZEI Te Riu Roa and may be published on this website once the analysis has been completed.
Aggregated results will be used to brief research funding partners, the Ministry of Education, employer bodies such as the New Zealand School Trustees Association, and other principals and senior leaders’ groups.
Are there any risks associated with participating in this research?
Some of the questions are of a personal nature. Should participation cause you any distress you may wish to seek help such as counselling. We have published a list of support services and professional organisations to assist you.
You may be contacted by Professor Phil Riley if your responses indicate that you may require extra support. This communication will arrive via email at the private email address that we ask you to supply at the commencement of the survey. As a registered psychologist with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency Professor Phil Riley is bound to act within the guidelines of the psychologists’ Code of Ethics. Therefore, if you disclose an immediate and specified risk of harm to an identifiable person or persons that can be averted only by disclosing information you have supplied, this information will be immediately passed on to the closest local agent legally responsible for the protection of the persons and/or general public.
Alternatively, you may contact Professor Phil Riley to arrange individual assistance. Please note that individual assistance could involve some cost to you, for instance if you are referred to a service provider who charges fees for their service, like a psychologist.
What is the COPSOQ II? What is the AQoL-8D?
The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire COPSOQ II is an instrument that has been used globally to measure work stress in many occupations. Using the COPSOQ II will allow us to look at your job stress and psychosocial health and compare it to a global dataset. You can also read about the scales of the COPSOQ II.
The AQoL-8D is a health-related quality of life instrument developed by researchers at the Centre for Health Economics at Monash University. Using the AQoL-8D will allow us to compare your quality of life against public norms.
We are using these questionnaires as they have been demonstrated to be reliable and valid tools.
Can I withdraw from the research?
Participation in this research is completely voluntary. It is up to you whether you choose to participate. Neither the research team nor PPTA Te Wehengarua or NZEI Te Riu Roa will know if you choose not to participate in this research.
If you agree to participate, you can withdraw from the survey at any time.
You can request your contact details to be removed from the research so that we do not contact you again, by informing us in writing.
