I hope the Schneider-Ross report on the equality audit for Cambridge University ( www.admin.cam.ac.uk./offices/personnel/equality ) will not become "a model for higher education", as suggested by Gill Jackson, herself a Schneider-Ross consultant (Soapbox, THES, January 26).
Questionnaires were sent to "every member of staff", but the number is not given. Some 3,034 responses were received at a 40 per cent response rate ("encouragingly high", said Jackson), from which we conclude that the number sent out was about 7,585. The respondents divided 1,520:1,377, men:women, which does not make 3,034.
Not all respondents answered all questions; the overall response rate can be computed from the number of answers, revealing a 66 per cent answer rate. The response rate was therefore not 40 per cent, but 26 per cent. The 40 per cent response rate "was consistent across all staff groups", but since the response to questions ranged between 87 per cent and 25 per cent, the actual rate varied between 35 per cent and 10 per cent depending on the question. Part of this variation will certainly have been between groups (how many cleaners ventured an opinion on their balance between research, teaching and administration?).
Some 2,137 out of 7,585, 28 per cent, thought Cambridge a good employer, which Jackson turned into: "More than two-thirds of staff surveyed view Cambridge as a good employer." The THES website then concluded that "a third of staff do not regard Cambridge as a good employer".
The actual number of negative responses to the question was 374, less than 5 per cent.
The graphs in the appendix are riddled with inconsistencies. At one point 266 "cleaning staff" disappear. A graph depicting "female appointments" has an unlabelled axis, while another charting the strange statistic "difference between total 'agrees' and total 'disagrees' for individual survey questions" fails to mention what the percentages quoted are percentages of.
Cambridge should have returned the report as incompatible with its own high standards.
A. W. F. Edwards
University of Cambridge