This study uses college student survey data and corresponding administrative data on campus recreation facility usage, academic performance, physical education class attendance, and co-curricular participation to examine nonresponse bias in college student surveys. Within the context of the Groves (Public Opin Q 70:646-675, 2006) Alternative Cause…

Institutions of higher education continue to migrate student evaluations of teaching (SET) from traditional, in-class paper forms to online SETs. Online SETs would favorably compare to paper-and-pencil evaluations were it not for widely reported response rate decreases that cause SET validity concerns stemming from possible nonresponse bias. To…

Technological advances have enabled institutions of higher education to administer course evaluations online, forgoing the traditional paper-and-pencil methods. Consequently, many of these institutions suffer from low response rates, but little research is available on this topic. To increase understanding about course evaluation participation in…

Although many studies have addressed the issue of response quality in survey studies, few have looked specifically at low-quality survey responses in surveys of college students. As students receive more and more survey requests, it is inevitable that some of them will provide low-quality responses to important campus surveys and institutional…

Institutions of higher education rely on student surveys for a number of purposes, including planning, assessment, and research. Web surveys are especially prevalent given their ease of use and low-cost; yet, obtaining a high response rate is a challenge. Although researchers have investigated the use of incentives in traditional mail surveys,…

While many studies have examined nonresponse in student surveys, little research investigates why some schools achieve higher student survey response rates than other schools. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we analyze survey data from 321 institutions that participated in the 2003 National Survey of Student Engagement to understand how…

A controlled experiment tested the effects of lottery incentives using a prospective college applicant Web survey, with emails sent to more than 9,000 high school students. Found minimal effect of postpaid incentives for increasing levels of incentive. (EV)

Examined response rates and nonresponse bias across four groups administered the survey "Your First College Year": paper only, paper with Web option, Web only with response incentive, and Web only without response incentive. Found that response rates vary by mode of administration; moreover, predictors of response differed by…

Two investigations, each involving a survey of university alumni, found that questionnaire type font (conventional typewriter type and professional-appearing type) and construction (single pages, stapled, and booklet) did not have a significant effect on response rates. Other considerations that may influence questionnaire design decisions are…

What causes a student to participate in a survey? This paper looks at participation across multiple surveys to understand survey non-response; by using multiple surveys we minimize the impact of survey salience. Students at a selective liberal arts college were administered four different surveys throughout the 2002-2003 academic year, and we use…