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Surveys

Since 1995, Quality Advancement has conducted:

  • the Student Opinion Survey(s) (of current undergraduate and postgraduate students) comprising the Academic Experience Survey and the Support Services Improvement Survey

Every year these surveys seek student and graduate opinion on their overall Otago experience in one-quarter of the University's departments and programmes (so that all departments and programmes are covered in a four year cycle). The results help the University to identify strengths as well as areas for improvement. Information on the scheduling of surveys is available here.

The Quality Advancement Unit is also responsible for the following surveys:

  • the First Year Experience Survey (includes the College Resident Survey)
  • the International Student Barometer (in collaboration with i-Graduate)

Surveys Coordination Group

Information about the Surveys Coordination Group can be found on the Surveys Coordination Group Website.

Surveys News

The 2019 Graduate Opinion Survey is opened and is underway. The survey will close on 25 May 2019.

The 2019 Student Opinion Survey - Academic Experience closed in October 2018.  The response rate for the survey was 53% (2889 responses.

The 2019 Student Opinion Survey - Support Services Improvement Survey closed in October 2018. The response rate for the survey was 47% (1879 responses).

Survey Structure

In additional to collecting some demographic information, which allows analysis by different sub-groups of students, the surveys seek feedback on the following:

Student Opinion Survey - Academic Experience

  • Course details
  • Course experiences
  • Postgraduate supervision & experience

Student Opinion Survey - Support Services

  • University services

Graduate Opinion Survey

  • Course details
  • Course experiences
  • Postgraduate supervision & support
  • Course outcomes

Results are distributed to Divisions, Schools and Departments after they have been analysed and summarised by Quality Advancement. Meetings are then held to discuss the results. Note that from 2007 the Student Opinion Survey is being run as two surveys: 'Student Opinion Survey: Support Services' and 'Student Opinion Survey: Academic Experience'. This change has been made in response to student feedback about the length of the student survey. Data collected will remain relatively unaltered by this change.

More information on the history, structure and analysis of surveys can be downloaded in the Guide to Interpreting the Student and Graduate Opinion Surveys below.

Reports

Summary reports are available from Quality Advancement. Any interpretation of survey results should be done with regard to the Guide to Interpreting the Student and Graduate Opinion Surveys and the Code of Practice for the Use of Student and Graduate Opinion Survey Data, both of which can be downloaded below.

If you have any questions regarding surveys or survey results please contact the Surveys Manager.

Downloads:  PDF format uses Adobe Acrobat which is available free at http://www.adobe.com

Survey Guidelines:

Additional Surveys

Since 2008, the Quality Advancement Unit has run additional institutional and research surveys on a variety of topics – a detailed list is available here.