2009 Graduate Student Experience Survey

The Survey

The online survey was sent via an email link to all graduate students enrolled in spring 2009. Responses were gathered using an online tool over a two-week period.

2009 Survey Questions

Response Rate and Representativeness of the Sample

The response rate was excellent. The final response rate was 53.9%.

  • International students were slightly over-represented among respondents (14.1% compared to 13.5% of the active graduate students in April 2009).

  • The gender composition was significantly different for the respondents when compared to our graduate student population. A weight was created to address this imbalance, resulting in an assigned weight of 0.917 for female respondents and an assigned weight of 1.115 for male respondents. Respondents who did not provide their gender received an assigned weight of 1.

  • Survey respondents also closely matched the profile of enrolled graduate students by race and ethnicity.

  • Students under age 30 were slightly overrepresented among the respondents, while students over age 35 were slightly underrepresented.

Analysis and Results

We examined responses about program satisfaction, advisors, and program climate by program organized by school, college and, in CAS, division.

We initially separated responses for master’s degree and doctoral degree students.

However, when further analysis showed no statistically significant differences between these groups within most departments, we decided to recombine the data. That gave us more robust numbers in many departments.

In addition to reporting frequencies, we also conducted analyses based on the chi-square statistic, evaluating whether the distribution of responses differs for two or more groups of respondents.

The chi-square statistic was selected because it:

  1. Could be calculated across the entire data set, which was comprised of categorical and interval data
  2. Would not require grouping or summarizing the data, which could obscure underlying patterns

For questions that included 'Not Applicable' as a choice (or in one case, 'Not Applicable/Don't Know/No Opinion'), the analysis was run with 'Not Applicable' included and excluded, and both statistics were reported.

A chi-square analysis was completed for the following groups:

  • Master’s vs. Doctoral Students
  • International vs. Domestic Students
  • Gender (overall and by school/college)
  • Race/Ethnicity groups
  • Department vs. the rest of the School/College
  • Class, as defined by the combination of the Socioeconomic Status and First Generation variables

Due to the use of weights, counts often do not sum to the total provided in the report.

The commonly established significance levels of *<=0.05, **<=0.01, and ***<=0.001 were used.

Individual School/College Reports

Departmental/Program Results Not Reported Due to Small Respondent Numbers

We did not report results by major in programs with five or fewer respondents. Thus, there are no reports for Classics, German, Applied Physics, Strategic Communications, or Dance.

We grouped the following programs in order to conduct data analyses:

  • School of Architecture and Allied Arts: All art specialties were categorized as fine arts, while public administration, community and regional planning were grouped

  • College of Arts and Sciences: French, Italian, and Spanish were grouped with romance languages. Asian studies, international studies, and Russian and European studies were grouped as international and area studies under social sciences.

  • Lundquist College of Business: All PhD programs were grouped together

  • College of Education: Curriculum and teacher education and furriculum and teaching were grouped with teaching and learning; special education – rehabilitation was grouped with special education

  • School of Journalism and Communication: All journalism specialties were grouped together

  • School of Music and Dance: All music specialties were grouped together

Messages to Department Heads and Faculty

In fall 2010, the following messages were disseminated by email from the: