PACE Climate Survey for Community Colleges, United States, 2010-2025 (ICPSR 39379)
Version Date: Apr 1, 2026 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Audrey J. Jaeger, North Carolina State University. College of Education. Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39379.v2
Version V2 (see more versions)
Summary View help for Summary
The PACE Climate Survey for Community Colleges, managed by the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research at North Carolina State University, was designed to provide community college leaders with insight into their institution's culture and capacity to promote student success by surveying employees about how they perceive and experience their work. This data collection is a nationally representative sample of community college employees pooled from individual PACE Climate Surveys administered for community colleges across the United States. For additional information on the PACE Climate Survey, please visit the project website.
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Funding View help for Funding
Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
Census Division
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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The same variables appear in both datasets and the files can be merged together as needed.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The PACE Climate Survey was created to provide community colleges with insight into their employees' workplace experiences and perceptions of campus climate based on four key factors: institutional structure, supervisory relationships, teamwork, and student focus.
Study Design View help for Study Design
Belk Center staff worked with participating community colleges to design and administer the PACE Climate Survey. Although community colleges could customize the survey, each version included 46 standard PACE questions and several demographic questions. Links to the online survey were distributed to employees through email or a community college's preferred method. Employees were sent emails based on participant lists provided by the community colleges. The online survey remained open for approximately three weeks, and email reminders were sent at one-week intervals.
Sample View help for Sample
Data collected from individual PACE Climate Surveys between 2010-2024 were pooled to create a nationally-representative sample of 175,125 community college employees. Data collected between 2024-2025 totaled a sample of 9,814 community college employees.
Universe View help for Universe
Community college employees in the United States.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
The data include variables about employees' experiences with supervisors, peers, and administrators as well as perceptions of the community college and its work in promoting student success and creating a positive work environment. Demographic variables include work classification (faculty, admin., staff), race/ethnicity, work status (full vs part-time), gender, years worked at the institution, years worked in higher education, and age.
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
The average response rate was approximately 48 percent across institutions.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2025-05-12
Version History View help for Version History
2026-04-01 Data and documentation for 2024-2025 were added as DS2.
2025-05-12 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.
ICPSR usually offers files in multiple formats for researchers to be able to access data and documentation in formats that work well within their needs. If you have questions about the accessibility of materials distributed by ICPSR or require further assistance, please visit ICPSR’s Accessibility Center.