As part of the Role of Profiles research project, the UX Service circulated a survey to staff across the University to gather data about how they use online profiles and what they think of them. 262 staff responded, providing valuable insights.

The Role of Profiles project seeks to understand what University staff need and want from online profiles with a view to making recommendations for a future means of publishing and managing profile content.

Our research plan for the project set out four key activities:

1. EdWeb data analysis: extracting and examining profile content published by staff in EdWeb, in association with University usernames (UUNs)
2. Competitor analysis: review of profiles and profile content from other university websites
3. Surveying University staff: gathering quantitative data about how staff use online profiles and publish profile content and qualitative data in the form of their feedback and views on existing profiles.
4. Interviews with staff: hearing from individual staff members about how they publish, share and update profile content, and gathering their expectations and requests for an improved profile provision.

Read more about the project on the project website and in a separate blog post:

The Role of Profiles: our new project researching needs and potential for online profiles

The Role of Profiles: WPS 021

Read about our findings from EdWeb data analysis (including data from University usernames (UUNs) associated with profiles):

Current usage of University staff profiles: Initial insights from The Role of Profiles project

Surveying University staff has been an important activity in the project. It has provided perspectives from staff on their use of online profiles within and outside of the University, enabling the project team to expand on the knowledge gained so far, as well as helping us to guide our subsequent research activities (in particular, our planned interviews with staff).

The survey was designed to gather data about profiles from staff

Hearing directly from staff about their use, expectations and needs for online profiles was identified to be a critical element of the project. It was important to reach varied sectors of the University to ensure the data collection was as representative as possible. Creating and circulating an online survey offered a way to engage a wide range of University colleagues. The survey sought to gather baseline information from staff with three multiple choice questions:

1. Do you have a staff profile on the University of Edinburgh website? (possible responses: Yes, No, Not sure)
2. Do you have an online profile outside of the University? (possible responses: Yes, No)
3. Please tell us your job type (possible responses: Academic, Professional Services, Technical and Other)

The survey also included a free-text box for comments about online profiles, and the final question asked if respondents would be willing to be interviewed about staff profiles (and if so, to provide their email address to be contacted). Responses were collected anonymously, only those opting to be interviewed provided contact details.

After sharing it widely, the survey received 262 responses

The survey was circulated via contacts in different Schools, Institutes and Groups, and via various mailing lists (including those of the Edinburgh Research Office and the Institute for Academic Development) and Teams spaces (such as the Marketing and Communication forum). It was available for completion from Tuesday 24 August 2024 to Friday 3 January 2025.

Of the 262 responses received, the distribution of job types was as follows:

• 136 Professional Services (52% of the total responses)
• 110 Academic (42%)
• 6 Technical (less than 1%)
• 4 Other (less than 1%)
• 2 Academic and Professional Services (less than 1%)
• 2 Professional Services and Technical (less than 1%)
• 1 Technical and Academic (less than 1%)
• 1 Academic and Other (less than 1%)

The majority of respondents (74%) had a profile, 15% didn’t and 11% were not sure

Of the 195 respondents who said they did have a profile on the University website, the split across job types was as follows:

• Professional Services (49%)
• Academic (47%)
• Professional Services and Technical (less than 1%)
• Academic and Professional Services (less than 1%)

The 39 respondents who said they didn’t have a profile fell into the following job categories:

• Professional Services (69%)
• Academic (18%)
• Technical (less than 1%)
• Academic and Professional Services (less than 1%)
• Other (less than 1%)

Of the 28 people that said they weren’t sure if they had a profile on the University website, the job types were as follows:

• Professional Services (50%)
• Academic (39%)
• Other (less than 1%)
• Professional Services and Technical (less than 1%)

Most respondents (65%) said they had a profile outside of the University

Almost as many respondents had external profiles as had profiles within the University. The 170 who said they had external profiles represented the following job types:

• Professional Services (48%)
• Academic (45%)
• Academic and Other (less than 1%)
• Academic and Professional Services (less than 1%)
• Professional Services and Technical (less than 1%)
• Technical and Academic (less than 1%)
• Technical (less than 1%)
• Other (less than 1%)

The 92 respondents who said they didn’t have an external profile fell into the following job categories:

• Professional Services (60%)
• Academic (36%)
• Technical (less than 1%)
• Other (less than 1%)

Responses indicated academic staff used profiles more than professional services staff

Comparing the survey responses from academic staff to those from professional services staff, the results suggested that profiles (both within the University and outside the University) were slightly more popular with academic staff than with professional services staff.

Comparing the responses about profiles on the University website:

• Of the 110 academic staff who responded, 92 said they had a profile on the University website (84%)
• Of the 136 professional services staff who responded, 95 said they had a profile on the University website (70%)

Examining responses to the question about external profiles:

• Of the 110 academic staff who responded, 77 said they had an external profile (70%)
• Of the 136 professional services staff who responded, 81 said they had an external profile (60%)

Equivalent proportions of academic and professional services staff said they did not know if they had a profile on the University website:

• Of the 110 academic staff who responded, 11 said they didn’t know if they had one (10%)
• Of the 136 professional services staff who responded, 14 said they didn’t know (10%).

The survey collected 133 comments about profiles on various themes

Comments submitted through the free-text box provided an additional valuable source of qualitative data. Some comments represented the views of profile-holders – revealing, for example, what it was like to set-up and manage a profile and keep it up-to-date. Other comments offered insights into the end-user perspective – for example, what it was like to search for information within EdWeb profiles. Themes that emerged from the comments are detailed below.

Difficulty updating profiles and confusion about their set-up

A relatively high proportion of comments (39% of the total) made reference to difficulties experienced using EdWeb to update profile content. More specifically, respondents mentioned:

• Trouble remembering how to edit using EdWeb
• Glitches with changes not saving
• Problems with editing permissions
• Difficulty uploading profile images
• Issues updating and including links.

Some respondents cited these difficulties as the reason many profiles were out of date. Several said they were unclear whether profiles were set up automatically (in association with their UUN for example) or whether they were able (and were expected) to set up a profile for themselves.

Related comments asked for profiles to be automatically linked to UUNs or People and Money records, to avoid profile content going out of date or the creation of multiple or duplicate profiles when staff members left or changed jobs.

Wish to streamline online content from multiple locations

PURE (the University’s research information system), ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID: a database that provides researchers with a persistent identifier for engagement purposes), LinkedIn, Gitlab, non-EdWeb websites, People and Money and other internal staff databases were all mentioned in comments relating to other online platforms including profile content. Other online platforms were mentioned in 22% of the total comments.

In their comments, respondents expressed a wish to avoid duplication of both content and effort across multiple platforms, and instead to use integrations to pull profile data from different locations into a single place. For most, this preferred location was PURE.

Acknowledging importance of profiles (both for external and internal use)

Commenting generally, 17% of the total free-text responses mentioned the importance of staff profile content. Some people commenting cited importance from an external perspective (notably to showcase work, accolades and specialisms – for the attention of academics in specific fields and prospective students, particularly PhD students looking for supervisors), while others described internal use cases (for example, using profiles as a directory to look-up fellow members of staff or to understand other staff members’ roles).

Some of the comments drew distinctions between the purposes of profiles for academic staff and those for professional services staff, and others felt the same profile functionality should be available to all staff, regardless of their job type.

Need for profile content to be more descriptive

Recognising the importance of profile content for different audiences, a small number of comments (4%) suggested profile content could be more descriptive, for example, including further details of job titles and roles (for example, explaining what the job of ‘Senior Lecturer’ entails). Another suggestion was to make distinctions between teaching and research staff, and to provide clearer details of research interests to give better indications of the work of staff members in question.

Requests for reuse and integration of profile content

Many of the comments included direct asks relating to profiles. Integration or automated display of data from PURE was mentioned in 18% of the comments, with respondents wishing to avoid duplication by publishing the same content in multiple locations. Related comments contained asks for profile data to be reusable across webpages and websites (for example as contact cards, atoms or chunks of content).

Searchability of profiles was important

Several respondents’ comments referred to the need for profile content to be easily findable, both from the perspective of using search engines to surface relevant profile details for named individuals, and from the perspective of using the University search to find colleagues.

Some comments reflected confusion over where different profiles ranked in search results (for example, cached pages appearing above PURE profiles).

Other comments expressed a preference for displaying multiple profiles in a listing or directory format, to make it easier to scan content and find people. Several comments requested facets, tags or filters, to enable searching and aggregation by category (for example, all the staff working in a particular area of research, or in a particular institute or research group).

Some requests for consistency, some for customisability

A few comments reflected the view that the EdWeb profiles were fit for purpose. Others expressed a desire for change.

Some people commenting wanted a less-structured, simpler page design for their profile with freedom to add whatever content they felt reflected them best, aligned with the construction of a CV. Others wanted a degree of structure, but with the ability for additional customisation or personalisation (for example content integrated from PURE as a minimum, but with the option to adapt this to individual needs).

Other comments, however, felt a standardised, consistent approach to profile design was required, accompanied with rules, policies or guidance relating to the content profiles should be populated with – in order to provide a better, more unified experience for end-users. One suggestion was for profiles to exist for teams, instead of individuals, to reflect the collaborative nature of some of the University’s work.

Concerns about privacy

A relatively small number (7%) of comments expressed reluctance to share profile data publicly. Some comments expressed a wish for their place of work to remain private, to avoid being contacted in malicious ways (for example, by scam emails) and said they did not like their personal data being in the public domain.

Data from the survey has provided further insight about profile usage

Quantitative and qualitative information from the survey has helped make us more sense of the data previously collected from EdWeb.

The relatively high proportion of survey respondents (65%) saying they had profiles outside the University and the finding that 11% of respondents were not sure if they had a profile could both help explain why there was less use of University profiles by some groups of staff, (as identified in earlier analysis of UUN data associated with EdWeb profiles).

The fact that more academic staff respondents said they had profiles (both within the University and external profiles) compared to professional services staff respondents also correlated with the finding from the UUN data analysis – that professional services staff were underrepresented when it came to profile use compared to academic staff.

Details in the survey comments revealed that some staff wanted profiles to be automatically linked to UUN data or other staff identifiers (for example People and Money records) to avoid them going out of date. This suggested some staff were aware of an issue highlighted by the EdWeb data analysis – that 19% of UUNs associated with published profiles were inactive.

The survey has helped us recruit staff to interview and to guide topics for discussion

Of the 262 staff responding to the survey, 88 kindly offered to be interviewed about their profiles, and interviews are currently being scheduled to ensure the widest possible representation from across the University, taking into account different Colleges, Groups and business units as well as job types.

Taking into account the data gathered from the survey, along with findings from the EdWeb data analysis, the interviews present an opportunity to hear more from staff to help increase our understanding of specific areas relating to profile use, including:

• Relative needs and preferences of academic and professional services staff about online profiles
• Benefits, drawbacks and preferences of external profiles compared profiles on the University website
• Processes by which profiles are set-up, updated and removed when staff change jobs or leave
• Reasons why staff don’t have a University profile
• Preferences around display of profile data and their design
• What staff perceive to be the primary function and purpose of profiles, including the tasks of the audiences and end-users the profile content is used by

To ensure a thorough approach, we are scheduling interviews in batches, with analysis sessions in-between. Working in this way, we are able to process and synthesise findings and iterate on our discussion guides to try to make sure we investigate all relevant topics and areas as they arise, to feed into recommendations for a new provision to enable staff to publish, edit and manage their profile content successfully in alignment with their needs and working models.