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.  

How is it going so far? 

You can find the latest response rates for your School and Faculty here.

These figures are updated automatically in real time with every response we receive. The target is 40% in every School so that we can meaningfully benchmark results, and be confident that feedback represents our PGR community. 

Who can take part?

All students who were registered on a PGR programme before the survey launched received an invite, including new starters and those post-submission, professional doctorates, MDs, MPhils, EngDs, staff candidates and remote location students. We want to hear from all parts of our community in order to get a full picture of the PGR experience at Sheffield.

How do I complete the survey?

You should have received a personalised link to the survey direct to your University email account on Monday 12th May and you have until Fri 20th June to complete it. Please don't share or forward your link - it's unique to you. If you've lost your link, haven't received one or are having issues, please contact pgrvoice@sheffield.ac.uk and we will be happy to help.

How long is the survey and are there any incentives?

The survey takes around 15 minutes to complete. You don’t have to do it in one go - if you exit the survey your answers will be saved and you can re-enter via your link to pick up where you left off. Your response won’t be submitted until you complete the final section. 

If you complete the survey, you will be automatically entered into a prize draw to win one of five £50 Love2Shop vouchers.

Is it anonymous?

Responses are completely confidential, and the results will be reported anonymously. Your supervisor and staff in your School will not be able to see how you have responded. They will only be able to view responses as part of an aggregated, anonymised report after the survey has closed. We ask you not to identify yourselves or others in your comments, but if you do include any names or personal information, these will be redacted.

We are collecting responses through unique links to ensure the integrity of the results (e.g. so we know all responses are definitely from current PGRs at Sheffield, submitting just one response each). It also means we can attach some information from your student record to your answers (for example your School, year of study, and some demographic data), so you don’t have to provide this separately. At the end of the survey we also ask some optional questions about your ethnicity and sexual orientation. All of this personal information will only be used by the central survey team for analysis purposes at a University level however, and will be removed before results are shared with Schools. We have a Data Protection Impact Assessment in place for this survey which has been approved by the University Secretary’s Office, and have also secured ethical approval via the University’s Ethics Review Procedure. You can read the full privacy notice at the bottom of this page.

What topics will be covered?

The survey will ask for your feedback on a range of areas, including:

• Overall experience
• PGR research culture and community
• Supervision
• Resources, support and environment
• Training, development and careers
• Generative AI

You will also have the opportunity to provide comments on any aspect of your time at Sheffield. 

When will the survey results be published?

Headline results will be published on this webpage in September 2025. 

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.  

How can I find out more about PGR Voice?

You can email the PGR Voice Team on pgrvoice@sheffield.ac.uk. We will also be regularly updating this webpage, and you can follow the University’s student social media pages for the latest updates:

• Instagram
• Facebook

PGR Voice Survey - Full Privacy Notice 

Full Privacy Notice

The information that you provide will be held in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Your personal data will be collected and processed for the purpose of evaluating the experiences of PGR students at Sheffield. 

The University will not disclose your personal data to any external third party, other than as set out above and/or where you have given us permission to do so, unless we are required to do so by law. 

We may share your personal data with other internal Schools. This will be anonymised however, and not include any personally identifying information. 

The personal data that you provide the University of Sheffield will be held in compliance with our Retention Schedule. 

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, the University must establish a legal basis for processing your personal data and communicate this to you. The legal basis for processing your personal data for PGR evaluation is that processing is being undertaken in accordance with Article 6(1)(e) which states:  processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.

Your right of access to your personal data

You have a right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like to request a copy of some or all of your personal data, please contact the University Secretary’s Office. We want to make sure that your personal data is accurate and up to date. You may ask us to correct or remove information that you think is inaccurate. 

If you want to request, amend or retract your response to the PGR Voice survey, you can do this via pgrvoice@sheffield.ac.uk up until the survey deadline. After this date responses will become part of an anonymised dataset and it will no longer be possible to amend or retract your response. 

Your other rights as a data subject

The GDPR provides you, as a data subject, with a number of rights in relation to your personal data. You have the right to withdraw your consent where that is the legal basis of our processing, have inaccuracies in the personal data that we hold about you rectified, a right to erasure, to request that the processing of your personal data be restricted, to object to certain processing activities and to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way we process your personal data. 

Who do I contact if I want to know more? 

For further information about your right to access information we hold about you, to make a complaint about the way in which we are handling your personal information, or to request to be removed from our systems, please contact the Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@sheffield.ac.uk 

If you are not satisfied with our response or wish to raise a complaint with our supervisory body, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.