Here we are in May 2021. If you are like me, you are thankful the semester is over and that you have made it this far. You may be experiencing a lot of emotions—relief, exhaustion, contentment, languishing… or all of the above wrapped into one. You might even have a sense of long-term fatigue.
In Student Life Studies, we talk about how many surveys students and staff get throughout the year. We know how many we send out and try to make efforts to be focused, short, and relevant. We don’t know how many other surveys are sent by other units across campus, but anecdotally, I think it is a lot. Students experience SURVEY FATIGUE—it’s a real thing. Students do not have a lot of free time to take surveys and are certainly not going to waste time on poorly designed or executed surveys. You have to make each survey count (and stop doing so many surveys!). In Student Life Studies, we see some surveys with really low response rates and completion throughout the year for a variety of reasons.
My colleague, Joe Levy, Executive Director of Assessment and Accreditation at National Louis University, wrote a really useful blog. You can read it here. He makes some incredibly valuable key points about design, invitations, engaging students, engaging faculty and staff, using results, and investing resources. Following these tips will hopefully result in a greater response rate with meaningful data that can help in decision-making. In brief, he emphasizes the importance of planning ahead and engaging others.
If you have any questions about creating and implementing a quality survey that will hopefully garner enough of a response rate for you to feel confident in your decision-making, please contact Student Life Studies. We would be happy to help.