PGR Voice Survey 2025

What is PGR Voice?

PGR Voice is your opportunity to provide feedback about your experience as a postgraduate researcher at Sheffield. 

We want to understand more about our PGR community and the things that matter to you. We’ll use your insights to make meaningful changes to PGR provision at the University, and results will inform PGR development over the next two years. This means your voice will influence PGR leadership both at institutional level and locally in your School. You can find information on the results of the 2023 Voice survey and the actions we took in response.  

What was the final response rate? 

We had an overall institutional response rate of 39.5%! Thanks to all our PGRs who took the time to fill in the survey and give us their views, and to schools and teams across the University who worked really hard to achieve this fantastic response rate.

When will the survey results be published?

Headline results will be published on this webpage in September 2025. We have completed the prize draw, and contacted the five winners via their University email account.  

What will the University do with the results?

The University will: 

• Analyse institutional results to identify areas of good practice and areas for improvement, paying particular attention to places where specific groups of PGRs report different experiences, or where results have changed since 2023.
• Benchmark results with the University of Manchester who we have co-created this survey with, to examine where our PGRs are having different experiences and to identify opportunities to learn from each other.
• Use this to set priority areas for intervention and improvement at institutional level, as well as feeding into projects already ongoing (e.g. reviewing allocation of funding, EDI policies, supervisor training etc). You can find an overview of actions taken in response to the 2023 survey here.
• Share relevant feedback with key central teams (Researcher Development, DDSS, Careers, Admissions etc) and support them to develop their provision for PGRs.
• Share headline results on this webpage, and in staff and PGR newsletters. 

Each School will: 

• Receive (fully anonymised) results including text comments for PGRs in their School, highlighting where results differ from Faculty or University baselines, or have changed since 2023.
• Develop and implement an action plan to target areas of improvement based on these results. 

This survey will be our key source of information about PGR experience at Sheffield until the next institutional survey in 2027.  

Still have questions about PGR Voice, or the survey results?

You can email the PGR Voice Team on pgrvoice@sheffield.ac.uk.