UCUES

What distinguishes UCUES from other national surveys of college students?

It is administered to the entire population (census) of students, rather than a sample.

It integrates institutional data from university records to provide basic demographic and educational variables such as ethnicity, age, and grade point averages.

The...

Why use a census administration instead of a sample?

It allows analysis at the level of small groups such as majors and specific demographic groups (such as sophomores, student athletes, or student parents). This feature is critical for incorporating UCUES results into periodic assessments of academic departments (particularly academic program review).

It enables a modular structure to ask a greater number of items about a broader array of topics.

It yields sufficient numbers of repeated...

What is a Wild Card?

The wild card module allows each campus to specify a customized set of important topical items of interest to campus constituents. At Berkeley, recent topics include students' RRR week and final exam experiences (2011), undergraduates' connection to UC Berkeley through graduation and beyond (2009), advising and mentoring (...

How do the modules work?

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).Module Work Flow

Following the core, each student is asked a set of questions from one of several topical modules, determined by random assignment, on a...

How are UCUES results used at Berkeley?

Systematic administrative uses UCUES responses about the academic experience in the major are reported each year to each department for its majors. The results are also analyzed in detail by the Financial Policy and Institutional Research Team for academic program review, the periodic in-depth evaluation of every instructional program. Students are asked to rate how satisfied they are with such aspects of their major as instruction by faculty and graduate student teaching assistants, advising, equitable treatment by faculty, and the availability and quality of courses. These responses are...

Can UCUES responses be calculated over time to document trends in the undergraduate experience?

It depends on the items and the time period. Although early versions of UCUES date back to 1996, the core set of items has remained relatively fixed only since 2006. Some items go back before that time, while others do not. It has been long established that responses to survey items are highly sensitive to even small changes in the question wording or response options. As a result, tracking non-identical UCUES items across years is unlikely to lead to valid comparisons and is not recommended...

Is UCUES an anonymous survey?

No. UCUES responses are confidential but not anonymous, which means individual student identifiers are collected along with each set of responses, but the responses are never reported in such a way that would allow identification of individual respondents. Non-anonymous data collection also allows survey responses to be matched to individual-level institutional data from...

I'm an undergraduate and I'm busy. Why should I take this survey?

There are many good reasons to participate in this research project. To list a few:

Make a difference. UCUES is your chance to influence policy in your major, your college, throughout campus, and across the UC system. It is the only effort of its kind to systematically collect feedback from all undergraduates about what is working well, what is not working well, and what is important to you. Your responses will be used by faculty and staff in a...

Who oversees the data collection, storage, and use?

UCUES is governed by a research protocol approved by UC Berkeley's Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. Each of the other UC campuses submits this protocol to its respective institutional review board with an intent to rely on CPHS's approval.

Who runs UCUES?

UCUES is a collaborative effort overseen by representatives of nine UC undergraduate campuses and the UC Office of the President.