Proceedings of the 8th World Conference on Qualitative Research

In recent years, the European Union has shown growing interest in strengthening the social dimension of universities. Likewise, the United Nations presents the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a guide towards a more sustainable world. However, in Spain, inclusion policies in higher education are still in their early stages of institutionalization. The case of a university is presented in which the diagnosis of inclusion policies has been carried out, as part of its self-evaluation and reflection process. This process has been the previous step for its Inclusion Plan.
The positioning on the inclusive approach at work assumes equitable treatment by the institution from three variables: presence (demographic composition); participation (giving voice to promote cohesion); and progress (improvement in learning and professional development). The diversity characteristics considered are age, sex-gender, disability, socioeconomic level, ethnic and foreign origin.
To do that, the ANECA Guide to diagnose inclusion in universities for people with disabilities; the Eurydice report (2023) that evaluate the 10 principles and guidelines to strengthen the social dimension of higher education; and a selection of SDGs and their goals have been considered to design a qualitative instrument to carry out the diagnosis in accordance with the intended objectives.
Thus, as a result, we have a diagnostic qualitative instrument called "UCODInclusion" organized in five different blocks namely Organization and Governance, Use of Information, Students, Administration Staff, and Teaching and Research Staff. It was applied to obtain data throughout conducting interviews and focus groups as well as analyzing institutional documents and websites.