NSSE 2007 Survey Overview, Administration & Response Rates
Survey Overview
The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is specifically designed to assess the extent students are engaged in empirically derived good educational practices and what they gain from their college experience. The main content of the NSSE instrument, The College Student Report, represents student behaviors that are highly correlated with many desirable learning and personal development outcomes of the college experience. Responding to the questionnaire requires that students reflect on what they are putting into and getting out of their college experience. Thus, completing the survey itself is consistent with effective educational practice.
Survey Methodology
In the Spring 2007, UNL participated in the NSSE for the third time. Previously, UNL had participated in 2004 and 2002. In 2007, the entire first-year and senior student population at UNL was contacted about participating in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). NSSE started by selecting a random sample of 3000 first-year students and 3000 senior students from a UNL student population data file based upon undergraduate enrollment in Fall 2007. Each of UNL's academic colleges was provided the opportunity to oversample the remaining first-year and senior population from its college. All colleges along with Division of General Studies decided to participate in this oversample. In February 2007, all first-year and senior students received personalized emails asking them to complete an on-line version of the survey. When students finished completing the survey (typically 10 minutes or less), their responses were submitted directly to NSSE. The Center for Survey Research (CSR) at Indiana University collected all of the data using techniques based on best practices in large-scale survey research by following up on their initial contact several times via email.
Peer Comparisons
UNL participated, as it did in 2002 and 2004, in the American Association of Universities Data Exchange (AAUDE) consortium. A consortium is a group of eight or more participating NSSE colleges or universities that share comparative, aggregated data among their institutions. In addition, consortium members are allowed to ask an additional 20 questions that address unique characteristics of their school. Ten peer AAU institutions participated in the 2007 AAU Consortium. The UNL Board of Regents identifies three of these AAU peers as peer institutions and six of these AAU peers also participated in the 2002 and 2004 NSSE. Click here for a listing of 2002, 2004, and 2007 AAU peer institutions.
In addition to the AAU peer group, UNL also compared their results with other Research I institutional peers and Big 12 institutional peers that participated in the 2007 NSSE survey. All three peer groups are referred to in the survey results section.
Response Rates and Demographics
UNL's response rate of 33% was slightly above the national survey response rate of 26%. For the UNL first-year sample, 32% or 983 students responded. For the UNL senior sample, 34% or 812 senior students responded. The demographics of the respondent group are proportional to the population in regards to race/ethnicity, enrollment status, college enrollment and transfer status. This indicates that responses do not over-represent or under-represent any one group of students within these categories. Female respondents were slightly overrepresented in comparison to the population of first-year and senior students at UNL and senior respondents of nontraditional age (24 years or older) were also slightly overrepresented in comparison to senior population at UNL.