Exploring the state of open inquiry on campus is an essential part of ensuring an academically and intellectually robust campus culture. Understanding the extent to which students and faculty feel free to engage in open exchange on campus can inform internal campus policy and culture change efforts.

To this end, HxA developed the Campus Expression Survey (CES) to better understand the climate of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement on college campuses. The CES measures the extent to which students feel comfortable or reluctant expressing their honest thoughts, ideas, and questions to peers and professors. CES results provide critical insight into the culture of open inquiry on university campuses.

We encourage faculty, staff, and students interested in the state of open inquiry on their campus to use the CES (or a modified version thereof) and previous survey results to inform their own efforts in assessing campus climate. The CES has traditionally been administered to students at four-year institutions in the United States and Canada, but it can be modified to fit different contexts and populations, such as two-year institutions, professional schools, schools in other countries, and discipline-specific faculty populations.

The CES can be administered in part or in full, and can be adapted to meet the needs of your own campus. As a publicly available tool, the CES is free to use, subject to the terms of a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license.

We encourage members to share survey results with HxA to strengthen our shared understanding of the landscape of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in higher education.

This guide is intended for faculty, staff, administrators, and researchers who wish to evaluate the climate of open inquiry and expression on college campuses, in diverse student, institutional, national, and political contexts.