1 Introduction
1.1 GEAM in a nutshell
The GEAM is a survey to help practitioners, activists, researchers or other staff to collect solid gender equality data in organisations. Targeting employees (academic & administrative) or students, it offers insights regarding people’s perceptions and experiences across several dimensions of gender and other inequalities. Collecting data on perceptions and experiences is important to understand the working climate, experiences of bullying or harassment, burnout or job satisfaction. As such, the GEAM complements other types of data collected for example from Human Resource departments on the representation of women and men and or other minority groups across different staff categories and salary brackets.
The GEAM comprises two questionnaires - one for employees and one for students - that have been translated into different languages. Questionnaires can be customised, i.e. reduced in length or amplified with additional questions. Questionnaires are freely available as LimeSurvey archive file and can easily be installed and run on any LimeSurvey platform. Within the framework of the INSPIRE project, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya offers a GEAM service, including access to a GEAM instance to run a survey.
Since it initial development in 2020, the GEAM has been used by more than +50 universities and research centres across Europe, generating +10k responses. It offers a framework to collect high quality comparable data on working conditions that faciliate dialog and learning within and across organisations.
1.2 What’s inside? What’s new?
During the INSPIRE project Building Europe’s Centre of Excellence on Inclusive Gender Equality in R&I (2022-2026), the GEAM has been further developed to better target academic versus administrative staff in different types of organisations beyond higher education. An additional questionnaire has been developed specifically to capture needs and experiences of higher education students.
Overall, the GEAM provides insights about
- individual experiences of employees or students regarding discrimination
- perceptions, awareness, beliefs about different aspects of organisational reality and cultural values
- factual working conditions such as fixed vs. temporary contracts
- socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, sexual orientation among others.
The GEAM hence goes beyond administrative data which often is limited on head-counts while its findings can be generalised via adequate statistical techniques to the entire organisation.
1.2.1 GEAM Employees version 3
The following illustration shows the four main components of the GEAM for employees and their corresponding question groups. Items highlighted in green have been revised for the GEAM version 3. Items in red have been newly added.
Overall, GEAM v3 has been improved by:
- Better filtering of questions targeting administrative- versus academic staff
- Added explicit questions about teaching responsibilities
- Added explicit question about leadership responsibilities
- Added new flexible working module (revised and generalised Covid items)
- Updated and revised modules on sexual harassment and bullying in the light of the UniSafe questionnaire (Lipinsky 2021 unisafe)
- Added new question items regarding bias against women in leadership positions
You can browse the content of the GEAM v3 employee questionnaire here:
1.2.2 GEAM Student version 1
The questionnaire for students has been developed from scratch. It is based on the GEAM v2 for employees but specifically adapted to the student situation. Importantly, the module on gender-based has been revised and expanded based upon the UniSafe questionnaire (Lipinsky 2021 unisafe).
You can browse the content of the GEAM v1 student questionnaire here:
1.3 When and where to use a GEAM?
Ideally the GEAM is launched during the initial stages of developing a Gender Equality Plan to understand better the specific challenges faced by each institution from the perspective of its employees and/or students. It is a starting point that provides organisations with a consistent and validated means of collecting gender- and other equality data. As such it should be used in conjunction with other means of data collection, such as focus groups, semi-structured interviews, document analysis as illustrated below:
However, the GEAM can also be used to monitor progress over time. As the following illustration shows, two or more waves of surveys can be used to detect changes in perceptions and experiences after gender equality measures have been implemented in the framework of a Gender Equality Plan, for example.
1.3.1 Assemble your team
In addition, the GEAM should not be seen as something that can be setup and run by a single person. Rather, it requires a team across staff- and organisational units to initiate an equality audit. Using a participatory process is a key principle of any equality data collection process as described in Chapter 2 in more detail.
Within the Athena SWAN charter programme, for example, institutions and departments applying to this gender equality award scheme, need to create a Self-Assessment Team (SAT) that includes:
staff who can collect and analyse the appropriate data (e.g. researchers and social scientists from within the organization and representatives from Human Resources with access to staff data);
decision-makers who can ensure that gender equality work in the organization receives the resources required to deliver it, and integrate the findings into organizational strategy and decision-making.
An effective self-assessment team must have authority within the organisation and include a variety of staff members so that those involved in the interpretation and application of the research results are representative of the overarching staff population of the organization. For example, the team should include staff on different types of contracts (i.e. full- versus part-time; researchers, academics and administrative staff) and from different parts of the organization (i.e. one person from each faculty or department).
Having an effective team and undertaking a thorough self-assessment is key to an organization’s gender equality research and planning. A thorough self-assessment includes, but is not limited to the following activities:
- Reflecting on a range of quantitative and qualitative data to identify both challenges and opportunities with regards to gender equality, collected through the GEAM as well as through other methods such as focus groups and interviews with key members of staff.
- Evaluating relevant policies, practices and activities.
- Responding to the findings of the above and establishing gender equality-based priority areas and appropriate aspirations and targets.
- Developing an evidence-based, comprehensive action plan to underpin advancement against the agreed priorities.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of actions undertaken on an ongoing basis, to ensure actions are delivering impact against objectives, and evolving the action plan in response to evaluation.
The GEAM should be seen as an available instrument that a self-assessment team can use to gather high quality data within their organization. Further guidance on how to implement a gender equality audit is also available through the GEAR tool hosted by the European Institute of Gender Equality.
1.3.2 GEAM workflow
The GEAM eases the design, launch and reporting of equality data. A standard workflow for conducting the survey and reporting results is shown in the following illustration (from left to right):
- The GEAM questionnaire provides the initial building blocks. It is already implemented in several languages on the LimeSurvey platform.
- After gaining access to a new copy, survey administrators can concentrate on customizing questionnaire content to their specific organizational needs. Extensive documentation is available (in this document) to help users to manage LimeSurvey, adapt questions and safely manage their data.
- The survey is then ready to launch. Survey administrators can monitor response rates and manage reminders for as long as needed.
- After the completion of the survey, a reporting template is available to generate the descriptive statistics report. A further analysis handbook guides readers to carry out a more in-depth statistical analysis and interpretation of their results.
The GEAM framework substantially reduces the time needed to setup and launch an online survey. Together with the reporting templates, it furthermore saves valuable time on the reporting task - time that can be reinvested in the interpretation of results and the design of gender equality measures.
1.4 Further reading and resources
The following chapter describes the development process of the GEAM employee version 2 during the ACT project.
Guyan, Kevin, Amanda Aldercotte, Jörg Müller, Maria Caprile, and Sergi Yanes Torrado. 2022. “The Development of the Gender Equality Audit and Monitoring Survey.” Pp. 44–63 in A Community of Practice Approach to Improving Gender Equality in Research, edited by R. Palmen and J. Müller. London ; New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003225546-3
An overview of the scientific background literature for the chosen scales during the GEAM development is available in:
Aldercotte, Amanda, Maria Caprile, Kevin Guyan, Memory Malibha-Pinchbeck, Jörg Müller, Rachel Palmén, and Carla Startin. 2021. ACT - Gender Equality Audit and Monitoring (GEAM) - Version 2. Zenodo. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.5348197.