Study Overview

The Canadian Principals’ Occupational Health, Safety and Well-being Research aims to examine the work and occupational well-being of principals. Principals play a crucial role in supporting student success. To support principals (and indirectly teachers and students) more effectively in creating successful schools, this project will eventually develop a responsive online survey that provides users with real-time, personalized feedback designed to empower them to make informed choices about their work and occupational well-being and provide policymakers and researchers with actionable data they can use to improve principals’ work and occupational well-being.

Pilot Survey Process

Participants will be added to Western University’s Qualtrics Survey Program. Email addresses will be used solely for survey distribution and data collection purposes. These addresses are removed once the survey closes and the data is downloaded from Qualtrics.

Each participant will receive a unique survey link generated through their email address. This approach ensures that responses are saved securely, allowing participants to pause and return to the survey as needed. The survey is designed to take approximately 30–40 minutes to complete and this functionality helps support completion without requiring one uninterrupted session. To maintain the integrity of the data, participants are asked not to share their personalized survey links.

Upon completing the pilot survey, participants will be invited to complete a brief 15-minute follow-up questionnaire focused on the survey’s structure, content and functionality. The data from this pilot will act as our baseline for the upcoming survey in 2026 and will be used to refine the survey tool before we launch to the full membership next year.

After both components are completed, individual participation in the research project will conclude.

Pilot Survey Participation 

If you are a principal in an elementary or secondary school and are available to participate in the pilot, please complete the expression of interest form. The form asks for your name, association, board and email so that we can ensure we have adequate representation from each district. 

At this time, participation in the study is limited to those serving in a principal role. This is necessary given the specific research goals and focus and the ethics approval process. The role of vice-principals is vital and we recognize the importance of capturing those experiences in subsequent phases. Our hope is to expand the scope of the project in the future. 

Please share the form with others in your district who might want to be part of the pilot. 

Details

If you have any questions, please contact lhoran@principals.ca.