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

2. 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

3. 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 requests should be stopped and unnecessary surveys reduced.
S Ghosh Survey Office, UEA

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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