Digital White Papers

I L T A ' S 2 0 2 0 D I V E R S I T Y, E Q U I T Y, A N D I N C L U S I O N C L I M A T E S U R V E Y R E S U L T S 7 order for the task force to listen to members, staff, volunteers, partners, we set out to accomplish this through ILTA's first DEI Climate Survey, which was completed last fall. The team has analyzed the results and has found several notable findings. While we were a bit concerned about the potential impact of the pandemic on participation in this survey, many of you provided insightful responses in the 144 completed surveys Let's begin by looking at the quantitative data that was analyzed and will serve as a benchmark for future surveys. The task force engaged a leading academic resource, Dr. Mike Allen from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, to review the survey questions and analyze the data. When analyzing the data, we found some results were reassuring. Twelve questions were asked regarding feelings about the direct experience people have had with ILTA. We are happy to report that generally speaking, the responses indicated a positive view of ILTA based on direct experience. The overall mean was 42.7 on a 12 to 60 scale. Essentially, if one examines that average item score, the 3.55 is above the midpoint of 3.00 (on a scale of 1 to 5), indicating a positive view of the organization based on direct experience. The mean is not universal with a standard deviation of about 1.5, so there is a distribution of values around the mean. This result can be interpreted to members being reasonably happy with the organization and feeling positive generally. Also encouraging, when we broke this down by segments of the sample (i.e. sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, gender identity) no one group of respondents felt less positive than the overall sample. Beyond impressions formed through direct experience with ILTA, the survey also attempted to measure how people felt when it came to overall acceptance within the organization. Twenty-three questions examining the feelings of acceptance by the organization were asked on the survey. Similarly, to the previously reported results, we are pleased to report that overall, the respondents to the survey felt a high level of acceptance by ILTA on average. The overall mean was 91 on a scale that ran from 23 to 115, with an average item score of 3.96 (on a scale of 1 to 5). Essentially, for each of the items a person was selecting a 4 on the scale, indicates a fairly high level of feelings of acceptance by the organization on average, the standard deviation was about 1.5, indicating some level of variability but heavily weighted in favor of positive feelings. From a high-level view of the results, we feel great that the people who responded generally feel good about how ILTA is doing with respect the DEI. Of course, we would have more confidence in this evaluation with a higher number of completed surveys. However, this survey serves as a great benchmark for which we can measure our progress in the future. Beyond the statistical analysis, the team used Executive Summary

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