A report on data collected in 1997 is also available. Click here to go to the 1997 Student Survey Report.
Data collected in the spring of 1998 are being
analyzed and a report will be completed during the forthcoming summer
Background
Survey
Procedures
Notes
on Combining Samples Over Years
Student
Characteristics
Table
of Student Characteristics
Summary
of Student Evaluations
Overall
Assessment of UW-Madison Experience
Assessments
of Instruction
Assessments
of Advising
Assessments
of Services and Facilities
Assessments
of Campus Climate
Differentials
by Gender and Ethnicity in Assessments of Campus Climate
Getting
the Runaround
Advising
Financial
Aids/Bursar's Office
Use
of E-Mail
Study
Abroad
Involvement
in Faculty Research
Volunteer
Community Service
Difficulty
Getting into Classes
The University of Wisconsin Survey Center (UWSC) completed the fourth annual student survey during the Spring semester of the 1995-96 academic year. As in previous years, a sample of UW-Madison undergraduates was selected from the Registrar'srecords. A total of 1229 students were interviewed by telephone midway through the semester. Students in the sample were asked question regarding their satisfaction with various aspects of their academic experience and with the University's services and facilities.
In addition to replicating satisfaction questions from the 1993 to 1995 surveys, several topical modules were included. New questions on community volunteer work, involvement in faculty research, and experience with and interest in studying abroad were added. The topical module on advising which was included in the two previous years was continued with some modification, and questions about e-mail use and financial aid were also repeated. A series of questions on difficulty getting into classes which had been asked in each previous survey was included in a somewhat expanded form.
In this report we will briefly describe procedures used to collect the data and summarize the results. It is important to understand that we are merely over-viewing the results of the survey; this report is not intended to be a definitive analysis of the data. We are prepared to do additional, more detailed analyses on topics of particular interest. In addition, the data (omitting information that would permit identification of individual sample students) are available for analysis by others.
A separate section of the report focuses on change in assessments since the first student survey was conducted in 1993, with a series of graphs showing the distribution of responses to the assessment questions each year since 1993. A supplement to the report presents selected assessments by College, year in school, and ethnicity.
As in previous surveys, students' assessments of most aspects of their UW-Madison experience are very positive. For example, over 90 percent of sample students say that they would attend the UW-Madison if they had it to do all over again. Fifty-five percent said that they definitely would and 36 percent probably would. Three-fifths of students assess the overall quality of instruction as "excellent" or "very good". Only about 6 percent assess it as "fair" or "poor".
The distressing finding of the 1995 survey was that students' assessments
of many aspects of their UW-Madison experience had become more negative
over time. It is encouraging to find that this negative trend reversed
in 1996. For example there had been a drop (from 64 percent to 55 percent)
in the proportion of students evaluating the overall quality of instruction
as "excellent" or "very good". In 1996 this proportion returned to 63 percent.
There was a similar change in the proportion indicating that courses "challenged
them to think" and a number of other measures.
In the Spring of 1992 Associate Vice Chancellor Richard Barrows convened an ad hoc "Student Survey Committee" to consider implementing a regular survey of undergraduate students. This committee was created as a part of the administration's effort to assess and improve academic and student service programs on the Madison campus. A survey was seen as one way of obtaining systematic student input into this process.
In a May 20, 1992 memo Vice Chancellor Barrows summarized the Committee's recommendations:
"The survey should be composed of two parts: (1) a section on major
functions that is repeated
each year; and (2) a section on more detailed programs, such as financial
aid or computer
access, that would vary annually. Different units on campus might propose
detailed sections."
The same process was used for the preparation of the 1995 survey. Associate Vice Chancellor Gary Sandefur convened a committee to review the previous surveys and to discuss possible topical emphases. Because the University was in the midst of a review and reorganization of advising services, most of the previous year's advising module was repeated. In addition, financial aid services, career planning services, and the summer session were added as topical modules. Because those concerned with the provision of administrative services, as well as those concerned with advising and instruction, were interested in developing more effective ways of communicating with students (individual students and groups of students), questions on the use of e-mail were adapted from the 1994 survey and others were added.
In the fall of 1995 Sandefur again organized a meeting of College representatives and others interested in the student satisfaction survey. This group made suggestions for new topical modules, and for changes to modules included in previous surveys. There is continued interest in advising, financial aid, and e-mail, so these topics were all continued in the 1996 survey. Other areas of concern to the University are learning beyond the traditional classroom, and how the University interacts with the Madison community. These concerns inspired a new module on community volunteer work. Interest in the interaction between faculty research and undergraduate education led to the addition of questions on student involvement in faculty research. Finally, a section on study abroad was added in order to better understand who participates, who does not, and why.
After new topics are selected, UWSC staff solicits suggestions for content and specific questions from persons working in the area in order to ensure that the survey questions address issues of real concern. We meet with existing committees, ad hoc groups, and individuals to discuss what specific issues should be addressed, to brainstorm about questions, and to review proposed sequences.
An ongoing interest of Associate Vice Chancellor Sandefur, and of the University at large, is to better understand the experience of minority students on the Madison campus and to better meet their needs. In order to have better factual information on the experience of minority students, UWSC recommended that the sampling be changed so that there were more sample cases of Black, American Indian, and Hispanic students.
In addition, UWSC recommended a modification of the sample design so that there would be more sample cases from the five smallest undergraduate colleges (Business, Family Resources and Consumer Science, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Medicine). Since 1994 students from colleges other than Letters and Science have been over-sampled. But even with this oversampling, the number of sample cases from these colleges was too small to permit statistically reliable estimates, even when data from adjacent years were combined. We recommended that students from these five small colleges be sampled at a higher rate than students from CALS, Education, and Engineering, and that students from those colleges continue to be sampled at a higher rate than those from L and S.
After making changes in the sample design in each of the past three years, we believe that it is now nearly optimal, and we recommend that the 1996 sample design be continued indefinitely. One change that might be considered is to augment the number of freshmen in the sample.
Here we provide a brief overview of survey procedures. Appendix A provides a more detailed account.
During the spring semester the University of Wisconsin Survey Center conducted the fourth annual survey of UW-Madison student satisfaction. The survey was conducted by telephone between February 9 and April 29. A total of 1229 interviews, averaging 22 minutes in length, were conducted.
Students were called at their Madison area phone number. An extensive effort was made to locate students who had moved. Calls were attempted at different times of day and days of week in order to maximize the probability of finding the student at home. In order to complete interviews with as large a fraction of the sample as possible, twenty (or more) calls were made before giving up.
The response rate was 85.7 percent. This is an excellent response rate, although slightly lower than last year's. It should be noted that we are sampling students enrolled in the Fall semester and interviewing in the Spring semester. Some students in the sample are no longer enrolled - having graduated, dropped out, transferred, or taken leave from their studies between the Fall and the Spring semesters. It appears that a significant number of our non-respondents are persons who are no longer enrolled. (Since the focus of the survey was the quality of instruction, services, and facilities during the current academic year, students who were enrolled in the Fall but not in the Spring term were included in the sample.)
THE SAMPLE
The sample was drawn by the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) from student records. In addition to obtaining sample students' names and information necessary to locate them (telephone numbers, addresses, etc.), other information was obtained from administrative records (grade point average, ACT/SAT scores, gender, ethnicity, in- versus out-of-state tuition, etc.) As in previous student surveys, procedures to protect the confidentiality of information obtained from and about students are carefully followed . Data files available for others' use do not contain identifying information.
As mentioned above, in order to have enough sample cases to make reliable statistical estimates, some categories of students are sampled at higher rates than others. The sample is stratified by year in school (seniors versus non-seniors), minority status, and college (Letters and Science versus the smaller and smallest colleges). The five smallest colleges (Business, Family Resources and Consumer Science, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Undergraduate Medical Programs) were sampled at a higher rate than the larger non-L & S colleges (Agriculture and Life Science, Education, and Engineering), and students from these colleges are sampled at a higher rate than those from L & S. Minority students are sampled at a higher rate than majority white students.
Because of differential selection probabilities and slight differences in response rates among strata, cases must be weighted so that they represent the undergraduate student population. A weight variable is provided on the data file. All of the information in this report is based on weighted data. The table below shows sample selection probabilities and completion rates by sample stratum.
Even with the over-sampling of minority students and students in the smaller colleges, the number of sample cases in a single year's data is sometimes too small for reliable estimation. For measures that are available in previous surveys, data from multiple years can be combined to improve estimation. This is discussed below.
CHARACTERISTICS OF UW-MADISON
UNDERGRADUATES
The table below shows the unweighted number of cases and the unweighted and weighted distributions for various student characteristics.
Click Here to Go to Table Showing Sample Student Characteristics
The column labeled "Unweighted N" shows the actual number of sample
cases in the 1996 survey. For example, the sample included 92 African American
students. The "Weighted Percentage Distribution" column shows the relative
frequency of students with different characteristics. Two classifications
of year in school and ethnicity are included - one based on administrative
records and the other on responses to the survey. Detailed analyses of
previous years' data showed that the sample represents the student body
very well - i.e., weighted sample distributions are very similar to distributions
from administrative records.
NOTES ON COMBINING SAMPLES OVER YEARS
As noted above, we will combine samples for adjacent years in order to make comparisons among colleges and among racial and ethnic groups and for certain other comparisons where the data from a single year's survey do not permit statistically reliable estimates. (When we combine over years, we weight each year by the actual number of sample cases. Since the number has been about the same each year this procedure weights years approximately equally. And we weight cases within each year to adjust for differential selection probabilities and differential stratum-specific survey completion rates.)
The possible disadvantage of combining the samples over successive years is that recent changes may be muted. For example, suppose that College A recognized that it had problems with advising and took action to correct these problems. If there were sufficient sample cases, the data from the 1996 data survey would show an improvement in student assessments of advising. Combining data from previous years with data from the 1996 survey would conceal some of the improvement. But this should not be a serious problem since the effects of organizational changes are usually quite gradual, and in most cases we will combine data from 1995 and 1996 only. We will combine data for all for years only for measures that are applicable to only a small fraction of the student respondents and for comparisons among very small subgroups of students.
In this section we present a brief summary of the 1996 responses to
the evaluation items. We provide (weighted) distributions of each of these
measures and a brief narrative commentary. We use a short descriptive statement
to indicate what the item is; the full question wording is included in
Appendix B.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT OF UW-MADISON EXPERIENCE
Students continue to have very favorable opinions of the UW-Madison. Two questions asked for an overall assessment of the University. Over 90 percent of undergraduate students say that if they had it to do all over again they would attend the UW-Madison - 55 percent "definitely would" and 36 percent "probably would" attend. Ninety-one percent of students expressed satisfaction with their overall experience to date at the UW-Madison - 39 percent "extremely satisfied" and 52 percent "satisfied." Sixty-six percent regard the UW-Madison as a "good buy", in that they assessed the "the UW-Madison in terms of the cost of attending, in relation to the quality of education received" as "excellent" or "very good"; twenty-five percent rated it as "good" and only 10 percent as "fair" or "poor."
OVERALL QUALITY OF INSTRUCTION /COURSES CHALLENGE TO THINK
Sixty-three percent of students assessed the "overall quality of instruction" as excellent or very good; an additional 31 per cent said it was good; and 6 percent said that it was fair or poor. Over two-thirds evaluated the extent to which their courses "challenged them to think" as excellent or very good, and only six percent as fair or poor.
CLASS SIZE
Eighty-eight percent expressed satisfaction with the size of their classes.
What is the distribution of size of students' classes, and how does the actual size of classes relate to satisfaction with class size? Just before the question assessing class size, students were asked two questions about their experience with large and small classes.
G6b In the current school year, about how many, if any, classes
have you had with
25 or fewer students in the lecture?
Over one-quarter of students have had no more than one large class this academic year. About 30 percent have had 5 or more large classes. Similarly, one-quarter of all students have had no small classes this academic year, and about one-third have had three or more small classes. The more large classes a student has had, the more likely they are to be dissatisfied with the size of classes, but even at the extreme of six or more large classes, less than one-fifth report dissatisfaction. Similarly the fewer small classes, the greater the dissatisfaction, but only about one-sixth of students with no small classes report dissatisfaction with the size of classes. A more detailed analysis would have to consider many other factors, including year in school and the college in which the student is enrolled.
INSTRUCTORS
Nearly 40 percent of students ranked instructors' sensitivity to their needs as students as "excellent" or "very good"; about 20 percent rated it as only "fair" or "poor". Somewhat more than half of students rated instructors' availability outside of class as "excellent" or "very good" and 14 percent as only
"fair" or "poor". About one-third of students thought instructors' feedback on their work was "excellent" or "very good" and 28 percent rated it as "fair" or "poor".
TEACHING ASSISTANTS
A large proportion of all students have contact with Teaching Assistants during the course of an academic year. In the 1996 survey ninety-two percent of all sample students reported having had one or more courses with a teaching assistant. One student in three reported having had six or more courses with TA's during the current academic year. Half of all students reported having had at least one course with a TA whose native language was not English. Experience with Teaching Assistants varies by year in school. Less than 1 percent of freshmen and sophomores report not having had a course with a TA during this academic year. Among juniors it is 8 percent and among seniors 17 percent. Three-quarters of freshmen, 62 percent of sophomores, nearly half of juniors, and 22 percent of seniors have had five or more courses with TA's.
Forty-seven percent of students rated TA's as excellent or very good, while 17 percent rated them as fair or poor. Only 29 percent of students who had experience with non-native-English-speaking TA's rated them as excellent or very good; 39 percent responded that they were only fair or poor.
MAJOR
Students who had declared a major or who had an intended major were asked questions about the quality of curriculum and teaching in their major. About two-thirds assessed each as excellent or very good and fewer than one-tenth said they were only fair or poor.
There have been questions regarding advising in the core of the survey since the beginning. In 1994, 1995, and 1996 an advising module was added to the survey as one of the special emphases. Here we summarize the advising assessments that are in the core. A later section will summarize results of the special advising module.
Students continue to have relatively negative assessments of advising. Overall, nearly one-third of students rate advising as "excellent" or "very good" and about 40 percent rate it as "fair" or "poor".
Students who reported having seen an advisor were asked to assess seven dimensions of advising. There was considerable variation in responses to these items. The percents responding "Excellent" or "Very Good" were:
Thus it appears that students are more positive toward each of these aspects of advising (with the exception of advising regarding career opportunities) than they are toward advising overall.
The complete distribution of responses of students who reported having seen an advisor (for this reason) follow:
Students were asked to assess the quality of UW-Madison services, ranging from libraries to recreation programs and facilities to classrooms and labs. The overall distribution of responses to these items is shown in the table below. We will not comment on these individual assessments. (The number in parentheses in the last column is the total number of sample students giving an assessment of the particular item. This is a rough indicator of the statistical precision of the estimate - the larger the N, the better the statistical precision. It is also indicates the approximate fraction of all students who have contact with the service or facility. Students are asked to provide assessments only of things that they have direct experience with this academic year. For example, since only about half of all students have financial aid, only 629 (of 1229 in the total sample) provide assessments of financial aid services.)
Finally, a series of questions assessed "climate" of the UW-Madison.
These items include how well the University does in creating a sense of
belonging and in addressing sexism, racism, harassment, and discrimination.
The aggregate distributions of responses to these questions are shown below.
Rather few students rate the UW-Madison as excellent on any of these dimensions,
nor do many rank it as poor. The responses tend to concentrate in the "good"
category - for each of these items more than 40 percent (range 44-52 percent)
responded "good", about one-third (range 29 - 37 percent) "excellent" or
"very good", and about one-quarter (range 16-28 percent) "fair" or "poor".
FEELING COMFORTABLE
Sample students were asked how comfortable they feel as a part of the
UW-Madison community. Only 5 percent of students reported feeling uncomfortable;
fifty-seven percent reported feeling very comfortable.
FEELING SAFE
It appears that most students feel relatively safe on the campus and in areas of the city surrounding the campus. A significant minority - about 13 percent on campus and about 20 percent near the campus - do not.
In this section we will pool data from the 1995 and 1996 surveys to examine differences in perceptions of "climate" by gender and ethnicity.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
Men are somewhat more likely than women to think that the University is doing a good job in dealing with sexism (41% versus 33% say "excellent" or "very good" and 13% versus 18% say "fair" or "poor". Women are also somewhat more negative in their assessments of the University's dealing with racism - - 31 percent of men and 26 percent of women say "excellent" or "very good" and 21 versus 30 percent say "fair" or "poor". Similarly men are less likely than women to feel that the UW-Madison is doing an excellent or very good job of dealing with discrimination and harassment, but there are virtually no gender differences in the percents saying "fair" or "poor". There is no gender difference in the proportion feeling a sense of belonging on campus, feeling comfortable as part of the UW-Madison community, or in assessments of the University's response to student interest and concerns (Data not shown in table.)
There are very large gender differences in the proportions feeling safe
on campus and in the area around the campus. Virtually all men, but less
than three-quarters of women, report feeling safe on campus. About three-fifths
of women report feeling safe in the Madison community around the campus
Because, even with over-sampling, there are so few minority students in the sample we will combine data from all four years to examine differences by ethnicity. Even when we combine the four surveys we have only a small number of sample minority students, particularly American Indians and students of specific Hispanic and Asian origins. We present data here for all Asian groups combined and all Hispanic groups combined, even though we recognize that there is great heterogeneity among subgroups.
In the table below we show the percent of sample students of each ethnicity
who gave negative responses to each of the "climate" measure. The differences
by ethnicity are quite complex. Black students are much more negative on
all measures (excluding the two safety items) than the other groups. Asian
students tend to be similar to white students on each of these "climate"
measures, with Hispanic students falling between black and majority white
students. For most measures the assessments of Hispanic students are closer
to those of the white students than of black students. There are only small
differences by ethnicity in the responses to the "feel safe on campus"
and the "feel safe in Madison" questions.
Discussions with minority students and UW-Madison staff working with minority students while planning the 1995 student survey led to the conclusion that we were missing an important dimension of campus climate that may be particularly important to minority student experience. We added the "comfortable as a part of the UW-Madison community" question.
Only 22 percent of Black students report that they "feel very comfortable" as a part of the UW-Madison community." This compares with 37 percent of Asian students, about half of American Indian and Hispanic students, and 62 percent of majority white students. Twenty-three percent of black students report feeling uncomfortable compared to 4 to 7 percent of each of the other ethnic groups.
Women are slightly more likely than men to report feeling very comfortable. 
A question intended to measure perceptions of the responsiveness of university offices and staff has been included in each year's survey:
D5 Since the beginning of the
current academic year, how many times, if
any, have you felt that you have been "given the run-around" by the
University's administrative bureaucracy?
For students reporting that they have, a follow-up question asks:
Can you tell me about that/the most recent time?
About 40 percent of all students reported that they had been given "the
run-around" by the University's administrative bureaucracy during the current
academic year. Eleven percent reported that this had happened three or
more times.
Freshmen are less likely than other students to report having been
given "the run-around", but there are only small differences among the
upper classes. Students in the School of Business are least likely, while
those in Education are most likely to report having been given "the run-around".
(It is important to understand that students are classified by the college
in which they are enrolled; this may not be the college where the run-around
occurred.
Go to Second
Section of Report
