ll undergraduates are asked a common core of questions about time use, student development, academic engagement, experience with their major (for upper division students), campus climate, and background characteristics (demographics).
Following the core, each student is asked a set of questions from one of several topical modules, determined by random assignment, on a subject such as
- academic engagement,
- civic engagement (politics and community service),
- student development (moral and psychological),
- student programs and services,
- globalization, or
- a "wild card" group of items unique to each campus.
The form of each module, except the wild card, is identical across all campuses in a given year. This arrangement allows greater breadth of topics and more discretion over content without increasing the length of the survey.