Targeting UEA Students Sample characteristics and segmentation strategies Dr S. Ghosh, Survey Office, DOS 0.104. September 2010

Outline Rationale for reducing surveys Sample segmentation Sample characteristics Gender Ethnicity Fee Status – EU/Overseas/Home Criteria for targeting sub-groups S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

Rationale for reducing surveys UEA students need to be surveyed for a number of institutional and strategic reasons In the past, students have complained about over-surveying and survey fatigue. Heads of Divisions and ET have agreed that mass email requests should be stopped and unnecessary surveys reduced. S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

Rationale continued... Over surveying can lead to a reduction in response rates for surveys that determine league table rankings such as NSS and PTES/PRES Unfair on students since they are a captive audience and they need to commit substantial time and energy to completing surveys. S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

Appropriate time to survey Student groups corresponding to distribution lists Periods to avoid all first year undergrads The first month of the first term and + Feb 2011 all second year undergrads Feb 2011 all third year undergrads Feb-April 2011 for NSS + Estates commuter survey all fourth year undergrads Feb-April 2011 for NSS all postgrads Feb- Week 4 of April 2011 PTES/PRES all taught postgrads Feb Week 4 of April 2011 PTES all research postgrads Week 3 of Feb- End of April 2011 PRES all first year students The first month of the first term all post grad students in the first year S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

Sample characteristics - Gender If your research projects need more male students than females you should target the following groups: SCI – PGT and PGR If you need more female than male respondents you should target the following groups: FOH UG, FOH PGT, SSF UG and SSF PGT The other groups have similar percentages of males and females HUM has slightly more females than males across all the groups. S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

Sample Characteristics - Ethnicity The faculty of SSF is the most ethnically diverse and HUM is the least diverse. The highest proportions of students from ethnic minority groups are in PGT SCI, PGT SSF and PGR SSF. International studies indicate that participation from ethnic minority groups tend to be lower than the dominant groups therefore targeting groups with a higher percentage of ethnic minority respondents could be useful if your project is of relevance for ethnic minority students and there is a research requirement to include them. S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

EU/Overseas There are many more EU/Overseas at the postgraduate level than at the undergraduate level. PGs SSF PGT (53%) has the highest percentage of overseas students followed by SSF PGR (36%) and SCI PGT (34%). Among the PGRs, SCI PGR has the highest percentage of EU students (20%) followed by SSF PGR (19%) UGs HUM UG has the lowest percentage of EU students (1%) while FOH UG has the lowest percentage of overseas students (2%) Among the UGs, SSF has the highest percentage of overseas students (12%). S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

Criteria for targeting sub-groups Timing - Ensure that curriculum survey exercises do not clash with institutional survey exercises Aims of the project – Clearly defined research goals and hypotheses are critical for selecting sub-groups Benefit to survey participants- You may need to survey for curriculum requirements but it is good practice to think about how your research can help research participants. For e.g. Research on eating disorders are more likely to help female respondents than males. S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

Criteria contd.... Oversampling for research – If you need a higher proportion of males or respondents from ethnic minority backgrounds then select sub-groups where there is a higher prevalence of these characteristics Reciprocal agreements- Find out if other courses need to survey students and establish reciprocal agreements so that each department can access each other’s students. S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA