In this qualitative study, I worked with international students to understand how researchers can increase response rates to international student experience surveys. I explicitly framed international students as a potentially vulnerable and hard-to-reach population, and then considered barriers associated with vulnerable populations and research…

For hard-to-survey populations such as ethnic minorities and immigrants, increasing survey response rates is a crucial element of the fieldwork as these populations often show a higher likelihood of not participating compared with the native population. However, no study has so far compared different strategies for mobilisation within this group.…

Responsive survey design is a technique aimed at improving the efficiency or quality of surveys by using incoming data from the field to make design changes. The technique was pioneered on large national surveys, but the tools can also be applied on the smaller-scale surveys most commonly used by sociologists. We demonstrate responsive survey…

Low response rate and quality are common challenges when administrating student evaluations of teaching (SETs). This study aimed to increase SET response rate and quality by investigating a widely recommended strategy to overcome an underlying reason for students' non-responsiveness, namely the lack of transparency about SET processes. In Study 1,…

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) can provide valuable assessment information. However, online administration of SETs has corresponded with lower SET completion rates. We examined perceptions of strategies for increasing SET completion rates and the effect of offering psychological prompts (completion goals, reminders, progress feedback) and…

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) are an integral part of evaluating course outcomes. They are routinely used to evaluate teaching quality for the purposes of reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT), annual review, and the rehiring of adjunct faculty and lecturers. These evaluations are often based almost entirely on the mean or proportion…

The use of surveys to better understand students' experiences and teaching quality in higher education has a long history of implementation and critical review. Although research on student feedback surveys has highlighted a number of areas of concern, a well-designed student survey on teaching and learning will produce a strong foundation of…

The proportion of web survey responses submitted from mobile devices such as smartphones is increasing steadily. This trend presents new methodological challenges because mobile responses are often associated with increased breakoffs, which, in turn, can increase nonresponse bias. Using data from a survey of college students with more than 20,000…

This article delves into student course feedback using publicly available data from the University of North Texas. It examines factors influencing elevated student course evaluation ratings in the Information Technology and Decision Sciences department. The study reveals a positive relationship between higher response rates and better evaluation…

Online surveys are frequently used in higher education to collect students' opinions. This study investigated the factors associated with students' willingness to respond to online surveys. Using 540 samples from undergraduate and graduate students in the United States, this study conducted a factor analysis to categorize the reasons that students…

This paper is about the development of a gamified application tailored to Generation Z (population born between 1997 and 2012) as an alternative to the text-based LimeSurvey (formerly PHPSurveyor). The study was conducted among students from the Department of Computer Science at University College Dublin. Data were analyzed from the perspectives…

Online teaching evaluations have replaced in-class teaching evaluations as the new norm for assessing teaching performance. Faculty raise concerns regarding lower response rates compared to traditional in-class evaluations. A low response rate implies an underrepresentation of the target student population and threatens the validity of the…

Objective: Assess the impact of survey non-response and non-completion for a campus climate survey. Participants: Intended for all degree-seeking students at a large, public, midwestern university, November 2014. Methods: The survey covered sexual assault experiences and related attitudes. We identify the magnitude and potential impact of survey…

This paper examines longitudinal survey response as a product of an alternative incentive structure that mixes guaranteed and non-guaranteed incentives. Specifically, we considered the impact of winning an initial non-guaranteed survey incentive on students' response to future surveys (both with and without guaranteed incentives). We found that…

Participation in web surveys via smartphones increased continuously in recent years. The reasons for this increase are a growing proportion of smartphone owners and an increase in mobile Internet access. However, research has shown that smartphone respondents are frequently distracted and/or multitasking, which might affect completion and response…