Administering CResDA and Ethical Considerations

How to use CResDA

CResDA is presented in the appendix (PDF) to this User Guide. The following are best practice steps to follow in administering, scoring, and reporting the results of CResDA.

Step-by-step guide for organisations:

1. Decide whether CResDA will be administered and analysed by an independent evaluation provider or in-house. Also decide who will provide recommendations for next steps and who will implement the recommended changes.

2. Decide whether employees will complete CResDA before and after the implementation of new technologies and whether their responses will be linked. 

3. Decide which employees within the organisation will complete CResDA (employees in the whole organisation or only in certain departments).

4. Create a version of CResDA by following the recommended order of presentation (see below).

5. Send initial communication to those employees who will complete CResDA (see the Example communication template).

6. Present CResDA to employees and collect responses anonymously (see more recommendations for presenting CResDA below).

7. Score respondents’ data using the CResDA Scoring Guide.

8. Interpret the aggregated results using the advice in the Interpretation, Feedback, and Reporting section.

9. Compile a feedback report for employees using the advice in the Feedback report section and suggest recommendations for adapting the digital change process.

10. Develop actions to modify the provision of contextual resources in line with the recommendations in the feedback report before the new technology is implemented.

11. Evaluate contextual resources and digital attitudes after implementing the new technology and ask employees additional questions about their participation in digital change events (optional).

Recommendations for administering CResDA: All employees currently working on digital change projects as well as those employees who might be involved in such change at a later date should be given the opportunity to complete CResDA. To take advantage of the recommendations for fostering positive digital attitudes and promoting technology acceptance CResDA needs to be completed in full (all questions).

Organisations who would like to assess whether employee attitudes have changed over time can use CResDA at two different timepoints (e.g., before and after technology implementation) and link employees' individual responses across both surveys. Protecting employees' anonymity in these instances will require the generation of a unique code for each individual which does not identify them personally but is the same on each of their completed surveys. An independent evaluation provider can provide advice on linking surveys through such methods. However, it is also possible to use CResDA at both timepoints without linking responses over time, which still enables examination of the attitudes that exist before and after the implementation, although any differences observed could be due to different people responding at different times. 

Recommendations for presenting CResDA to employees: It is best to include the CResDA questions in a survey generator that generates an anonymous link for sharing with employees. Employees can complete CResDA on their work computer, however, CResDA can also be completed using pen-and-paper if employees prefer to do so. To prevent bias in employees’ responses, the questions should be presented in the recommended order below. The recommended introductions to different digital attitudes and contextual resources are provided in the appendix. These can be adapted to include the name of specific digital technologies or specific digital project names so that respondents have those in mind when answering the questions. Modifying the wording of the actual question statements is not recommended as doing so will affect the validity of CResDA. 

Recommendations for Feedback and Reporting: Feedback and reporting examples are provided, including sample recommendations based on CResDA results. The recommendations should be used only as guides that can inform modifications to the digital change process. 

If CResDA is used to evaluate attitudes after technology has been implemented, additional questions can be asked to assess whether participating in particular activities related to the digital change is linked to more positive digital attitudes. 

Recommended order of presentation

Following these recommendations will help to ensure that CResDA is administered effectively and that the responses obtained are valid and reliable. 

• Present the statements assessing general digital attitudes (i.e., statements numbered 1 to 17 in the appendix) in a randomised order. It is advised that more than two statements assessing the same attitude are not presented next to each other. This randomisation helps mitigate the tendency for respondents to answer similarly to related statements, which enhances the validity of the results.

• Similarly, present the statements assessing specific digital attitudes (i.e., statements numbered 18 to 28 in the appendix) in a randomised order. As above, it is advised that more than two statements assessing the same attitude are not presented consecutively.

• Avoid mixing the statements assessing general digital attitudes with those assessing specific digital attitudes, as this would invalidate CResDA. 

Present contextual resources (i.e., statements numbered 28 to 63) to employees in the order provided in the appendix. Statements about different sources of support need to be kept together as they have specific introductory phrases (e.g., ‘In my team…’), and so randomisation of statements in this part of the survey is not recommended. 

Ethical considerations

CResDA should only be used to provide insights into the attitudes and perceptions of groups of employees, rather than pinpointing individuals. CResDA should be administered and data should be stored in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018: 

• Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency:  Employees should have the opportunity to inquire about why they are being asked to complete CResDA.

• Purpose limitation and Storage limitation: Employees should understand why their data is being collected and for how long it will be kept. 

• Data minimisation and Integrity and Confidentiality: To ensure their anonymity, employees’ personal information (including, but not limited to, name and contact information) should not be collected. For comparison purposes between groups of employees who complete CResDA, only minimally identifying information (e.g., role and/or department) should be collected. Identifying individual responses constitutes a breach of employees’ confidentiality. 

• Accuracy: Only aggregated group responses should be reported (e.g., responses for a particular department or level in the organisation) rather than individual scores. As a general guide, it is not recommended to report results for groups that consist of less than 10 people as this might identify individual responses. 

• Accountability: To compare the responses of people from different demographics (i.e., based on age, gender, ethnicity, or tenure) and protect the anonymity of responses, it is advised that data collection and analyses should be handled by an external organisation (experts in handling survey data) where the data controller is the external organisation.