Survey invitations were sent to 40,317 IT professionals in the EDUCAUSE database. A total of 1,592 respondents provided data that could be used for analysis, resulting in a response rate of 4%. Respondents were from all 50 US states (plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam) and from 35 countries outside the United States; 815 institutions of higher education were represented. Non-US respondents made up 10% of the sample. Data collection took place in April and May of 2018.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of other members of the EDUCAUSE research team to this report: Joseph D. Galanek offered his research expertise and constructive feedback on previous drafts, Kate Roesch developed the graphics and figures for the report, and Ben Shulman reviewed and verified the statistics and data presented in the report. Additionally, we would like to thank our EDUCAUSE colleagues Gregory Dobbin for his careful review, copyedit, and layout of this report and Lisa Gesner for developing the marketing strategy behind its release. Mark McCormack and Susan Grajek offered constructive feedback, vision, and leadership on the workforce research projects. Finally, we would like to thank our subject-matter expert, Marcia Dority Baker, Assistant Director, Academic Technologies with the Office of Information Technology (ITS) at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), for her timely and important review of earlier drafts of this report.