About Our Survey
The King County Auditor’s Office (KCAO) is partnering with the University of Washington to collect information on how COVID-19 has impacted your health and safety at work. We want to learn about the experiences of county employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By clicking on this link you will be taken to a page where you will give consent to participate in the survey.
Purpose of the Study
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the health and safety of county employees is paramount, as these workers are needed to ensure continuity of county services and programs. We are surveying King County employees to learn more about health and safety needs and concerns. Given the varied nature of jobs in which county employees work, surveying county workers allows for a cross-sector analysis of workplace health and safety practices and needs for King County workers which can aid in the development of policies or practices that could ultimately benefit workers’ countywide, across both private and public sectors. The survey will assess health and safety practices, concerns, and needs, concerns about returning to work, feelings around stress and anxiety, and other related topics.
Questions?
If you have questions about the King County Employee Health and Safety Survey, please contact Dr. Marissa Baker, Assistant Professor in the University of Washington Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences.
Email: bakermg@uw.edu.
Study Procedures
To participate in this study, you must be a King County employee in any job classification at the time you take the survey. You will be asked to complete one survey, which will take you about 15 minutes to complete. It can be taken during work time. It can be taken on a computer or a mobile device. The survey is described below:
Health and Safety Perceptions Survey: The survey will include questions about your feelings on health and safety in your workplace, your feelings of stress, what practices and policies are in place for you during COVID-19, what practices and policies you would like in your workplace, and, if applicable, questions about working from home and returning to the office during COVID-19. You may refuse to answer any question in the questionnaire.
Risks, Stress, or Discomfort
You may feel uncomfortable sharing your perceptions and thoughts with a research team via the survey. You may feel uncomfortable sharing information about your employer. Participation is completely voluntary and you are welcome to stop the survey at any time. All questions on the survey are optional, and you do not have to answer any question that you are uncomfortable with. Your employment with King County and all the benefits you receive from your job, is in no way dependent on your participation in this study. King County will not know which employees took the survey, and which employees did not take the survey.
Benefits of the Study
You will not receive direct benefit from participating in this study. The indirect benefit of participation is that you be informing research that will be used to develop policies and practices that help workers feel safer at work, and as they return to work, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Confidentiality of Research Information
You will not be asked to provide any direct identifiers in the survey (name, address, phone number, email address, etc.). However, some of the demographic information, when coupled with your work unit, may be identifiable in some instances for some respondents. To protect your identifiable information, all survey data will be stored on secure UW servers. Data can only be accessed by UW researchers with a password, and only UW researchers will have access to individual demographic data.
Government or university staff sometimes review studies such as this one to make sure they are being done safely and legally. If a review of this study takes place, your records may be examined. The reviewers will protect your privacy. The study records will not be used to put you at legal risk of harm.
Use of Information
Results from this survey will not be returned directly to you. Results from this survey will be shared with the King County Auditor’s Office (KCAO). No potentially identifiable data will be shared with KCAO.
Results will be published in peer-reviewed academic journals and as a report that could be available on the King County website. Results reported will be aggregated over groups, and no personal data or identifiable data will be reported.
To download a copy of the consent form for this study, please click here (allow PDF download)