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Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the National Student Survey (NSS)?
- How are the survey results used?
- Who is responsible for the survey?
- When and how does the survey take place?
- Who will be asked to take part in the survey?
- What is being asked in the survey?
- Who has access to eligible students’ contact details?
- Are my responses anonymous?
- How do I take part in the survey?
- Can I select my preferred method of re-contact for completing the survey?
- Can I opt-out of the survey?
- How long will Ipsos MORI be holding the students’ contact details? When will the data be destroyed?
- Where did Ipsos MORI get my contact details from?
- I have already completed the survey and I recently received a reminder. Do I have to complete it again?
- I am not in my final year as a student and I received an invitation to take part in the NSS. Should I take part in the survey?
- I completed the survey in 2009 - why have I been asked to fill it in again?
- How have the survey results from the previous five years been used?
- Why have I been asked different questions to other people?
- Which institutions are taking part in the National Student Survey 2010?
- Is it possible to change or withdraw my survey responses?
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1. What is the National Student Survey (NSS)?
The NSS is a national initiative, conducted annually since 2005. The survey runs across all publicly funded Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and participating HEIs in Scotland. Additionally, since 2008, Further Education Colleges (FECs) with directly funded higher education students in England have been eligible to participate.
The survey asks final year undergraduates and students in their final year of a course leading to undergraduate credits or qualifications to provide feedback on their courses in a nationally recognised format. There are 22 questions, relating to the following aspects of the student learning experience:
- Teaching on my Course
- Assessment and Feedback
- Academic Support
- Organisation and Management
- Learning Resources
- Personal Development
- Overall Satisfaction
- could enable you as an individual to be identified
- name individuals
- make references that could identify an individual
Completion of these extra questions is not obligatory and students can decline the invitation to complete these questions. Your answers for the main NSS questions will still be taken into account. The extra questions should take a few minutes to complete. The answers to these questions will only be provided to the student’s institution and students’ union and are not publicly available.
NSS Questionnaire
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2. How are the survey results used?
The results from the main 22 questions are made available for prospective students and their advisors on Unistats.com to help them make informed choices of what and where to study.
The results are also made available to participating universities, colleges and students’ unions to use to facilitate best practice and to enhance the student learning experience.
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3. Who is responsible for the survey?
The survey has been commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW), the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland (DEL), the Training and Development Agency and Skills for Health. These bodies have a statutory role in ensuring the quality of teaching in higher education is assessed, and believe that students’ views should form an important part of the assessment.
The survey is fully supported by the National Union of Students (NUS), NUS-Wales, and NUS-USI.
Ipsos MORI, an independent research agency, administers the survey. All work undertaken by Ipsos MORI is carried out in accordance with the Data Protection Act and the Market Research Society Code of Conduct.
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4. When and how does the survey take place?
Eligible students will be able to complete the survey online between 11 January and the end of April 2010. Eligible students will receive an e-mail before the end of February 2010, inviting them to complete the survey online.
If you have not yet received an e-mail, and are eligible (refer to FAQ 5 for further details) then you can complete the survey now.
Ipsos MORI will follow up non-respondents to the online survey by post and then telephone in order that we collect the views of as many students as possible to ensure the survey results are robust. Students are able to opt-out of the survey if they wish to do so.
The results are published on Unistats.com for prospective students and their advisors. The results are also made available to the participating universities, colleges and students’ unions to help facilitate best practice and enhance the student learning experience.
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5. Who will be asked to take part in the survey?
All students studying on courses leading to undergraduate credits or qualifications (such as Bachelors Degrees, Foundation Degrees, Higher Education Certificates and Diplomas) will be surveyed in their final year of study. This includes all final year higher education students at colleges in England.
In addition:
- Students on more flexible part-time programmes (whose final year cannot be easily predicted) will be surveyed during their fourth year of study.
- Students who have withdrawn from study during their final year will be included in the survey as their feedback is equally valuable.
- Students repeating their penultimate year will be surveyed (NOT when they eventually progress to their final year).
- Students who were already surveyed in 2009 will not be surveyed in 2010.
- Glasgow Caledonian University
- Glasgow School of Art
- Heriot-Watt University
- Napier University
- Robert Gordon University
- University of Aberdeen
- University of Dundee
- University of Edinburgh
- University of Glasgow
- University of St Andrews
- University of Stirling
- University of Strathclyde
Students studying NHS subjects will continue to participate in the 2010 survey.
If you are not sure whether you are eligible to take part you may still complete the survey. Ipsos MORI will check and validate your response. All eligible students who have not completed the survey will be contacted by Ipsos MORI by April 2010 at the latest.
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6. What is being asked in the survey?
The survey asks final year undergraduates and students in their final year of a course leading to undergraduate credits or qualifications to provide feedback on their courses in a nationally recognised format. There are 22 questions, relating to the following aspects of the student learning experience:
- Teaching on my Course
- Assessment and Feedback
- Academic Support
- Organisation and Management
- Learning Resources
- Personal Development
- Overall Satisfaction
- could enable you as an individual to be identified
- name individuals
- make references that could identify an individual
Completion of these extra questions is not obligatory and students can decline the invitation to complete these questions. Your answers for the main NSS questions will still be taken into account. The extra questions should take a few minutes to complete. The answers to these questions will only be provided to the student’s institution and students’ union and are not publicly available.
NSS Questionnaire
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7. Who has access to eligible students’ contact details?
Participating universities and colleges have passed contact details for eligible students to Ipsos MORI, the research agency responsible for carrying out the survey, under the authority of Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of all the funding bodies.
Ipsos MORI is a member of the Market Research Society and all details and responses will be handled in full accordance with data protection legislation.
Student personal data will be used only for the purpose of this survey, and contact details will be destroyed at the end of the survey.
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8. Are my responses anonymous?
Yes, results will only be presented in the form of statistical summaries reported by institution, subject or department. These summaries will only be presented where there are enough responses to preserve individuals’ anonymity.
Ipsos MORI and Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) will keep all individual responses confidential. At no point will individual students participating in the survey be identified to their institution.
For further details about how students’ responses to the survey will be handled, please see the Privacy Statement.
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9. How do I take part in the survey?
If you are:
- A final year undergraduate in England, Wales, Northern Ireland or participating Scottish institutions (see FAQ 5).
- In your final year of a course leading to undergraduate credits or qualifications in England (See FAQ 5)
- A part time student (or a student on a flexible programme of study) in their fourth year of study at university in England, Wales, Northern Ireland or participating Scottish institutions (see FAQ 5)
- Fit the description outlined in FAQ 5.
You will be asked for some personal data in order to verify that you are eligible to take part. Please provide all the information requested, as your responses will only be taken into account if all your personal information is accurate. If your personal information is not accurate we may re-contact you to validate your response. Once you have completed the survey you should not be contacted again or receive further reminders.
The online survey is linked to a live database of eligible students. Our database is updated on a regular basis. If you still receive a reminder, this may be because we could not match the details you supplied to the ones supplied by your institution or because there was some overlap between when you sent your response (for example by post) and when we re-contacted you. We will attempt to contact you by email, then if we have no response from you, by post and then by telephone.
Students’ privacy will be respected. The survey results will not be attributed to individual respondents and will only be reported by institution, subject or department.
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10. Can I select my preferred method of re-contact for completing the survey?
Yes, you may choose how you would prefer to complete the survey.
The survey uses a sequence of contact methods to invite students to take part in the survey. Ipsos MORI’s first default method of contact is email. However, you can complete the survey online now and we will not need to contact you. We send a postal questionnaire or telephone those who have not responded or opted-out. We may also re-contact some students who completed the survey in order to validate their response if the identification information they supplied is not accurate or does not allow us to remove them from the database of respondents.
Register Your Preferred Method of Contact and assuming we have not already contacted you, you can then select how you would prefer to complete the survey.
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11. Can I opt-out of the survey?
Yes, if for some reason you do not wish to take part, you can opt-out of the survey.
At any stage that Ipsos MORI e-mails or contacts you directly you can reply and say you do not wish to take part. You will not then be contacted again. You must actively opt-out if you do not wish to be surveyed; not responding to either the email, postal questionnaire or the telephone interview does not constitute an opt-out.
We need to be sure of the identity of the student opting-out. We therefore ask for the same identification information as for those responding to the survey. To opt-out of the survey now, click on the Opt-out link located in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. You will be able to opt-out of specific stages of the survey (e.g. the online survey), or from all stages.
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12. How long will Ipsos MORI be holding the students’ contact details? When will the data be destroyed?
Contact details will be removed from all computer systems by Ipsos MORI once they are no longer needed for contacting students about the NSS, and by May 2010 at the latest. Ipsos MORI will pass on all other data (including students’ responses) to HEFCE before July 2010 at the latest, and will only hold anonymised data until the reporting process is completed. No data will be held beyond that.
HEFCE will use this data for analysis, and will use contracted researchers who will have access to the data for a specified period in order to conduct the analysis and provide aggregated feedback to institutions. These researchers will destroy the data once the project has been completed. HEFCE will retain the data for any further or ongoing research, as they do for other personal data (such as Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) records and DLHE data). HEFCE will not receive any student contact details. They will store other data (students’ responses linked to Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) student records) electronically on a secure system, in the same way that other personal data (such as HESA records and DLHE data) is stored.
Please read the full Privacy Statement on the NSS for more details.
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13. Where did Ipsos MORI get my contact details from?
Students’ contact details have been supplied to Ipsos MORI by your university/college under HEFCE’s authority. Ipsos MORI have been commissioned to conduct the National Student Survey, and use students’ details for the purpose of the National Student Survey only. All students’ details will be removed from Ipsos MORI’s computer systems when the project has been completed.
Please read the full Privacy Statement on the NSS for more details.
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14. I have already completed the survey and I recently received a reminder. Do I have to complete it again?
There may be three reasons for this:
- We have not received your completed questionnaire; please complete the survey again if you think we should have received it by now.
- We could not match your details to our database (which contains all students who are eligible to take part) to validate your response. We need to ensure that the response we received is from you in order to validate it. Please complete the survey again and provide accurate identification information to allow us to validate your response.
- There was an overlap between when you sent your response (for example by post) and us updating our database when we sent a reminder to you. We update our database on a daily basis throughout the survey period to limit this occurrence but some respondents do slip through. Please complete the survey again if you think we should have received it by now.
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15. I am not a final year student and I received an invitation to take part in the NSS. Should I take part in the survey?
There are a few exceptions where some students who may not be in their final year are eligible to complete the survey. Therefore, if you have been contacted by Ipsos MORI to take part in the survey, you are eligible and we would like to receive your response.
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16. I completed the survey in 2009 - why have I been asked to fill it in again?
If you have been contacted to complete the survey this year you are eligible and we would like you to complete the survey. It may be that you were not eligible last year and that you were included in error. Your responses last year would not have been taken into account.
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17. How have the survey results from the five previous years been used?
The results are made available to prospective students and their advisors on Unistats.com to help them make informed choices of what and where to study. The results are also made available, to participating universities, colleges and students’ unions to use to facilitate best practice and to enhance the student learning experience.
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18. Why have I been asked different questions to other people?
Some universities and colleges have chosen to ask their students some additional questions in areas relevant to their particular learning experience. Students are given the choice of whether they want to continue on to complete these extra questions when they have completed the main NSS questionnaire online . If you choose not to complete the additional modules, which should take a few minutes, then your responses to the main survey will still be taken into account. The additional question modules are only asked if you are completing the survey online.
Students studying NHS subjects undertake practice placements, so their experience of higher education is slightly different. Therefore, in addition to the standard 22 questions, students studying NHS subjects are asked additional questions about their practice placement.
NSS Questionnaire
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19. Which institutions are taking part in the National Student Survey 2010?
| HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS (HEIs) | FURTHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS (FECs) |
| Aberdeen (University of) | Accrington and Rossendale College |
| Aberystwyth University | Askham Bryan College |
| Anglia Ruskin University | Barking College |
| Arts Institute at Bournemouth | Basingstoke College of Technology |
| Aston University | Bedford College |
| Bangor University | Bexley College |
| Bath (University of) | Birmingham Metropolitan College |
| Bath Spa University | Bishop Burton College |
| Bedfordshire (University of) | Blackburn College |
| Birkbeck College | Blackpool and The Fylde College |
| Birmingham (University of) | Bolton College |
| Birmingham City University | Boston College |
| Bishop Grosseteste College, Lincoln | Bradford College |
| Bolton (University of) | Bridgwater College |
| Bournemouth University | Brooklands College |
| Bradford (University of) | Burton upon Trent College |
| Brighton (University of) | Calderdale College |
| Bristol (University of) | Carlisle College |
| Brunel University | Castle College |
| Buckingham (University of) | Central Sussex College |
| Buckinghamshire New University | Chesterfield College |
| Cambridge (University of) | Chichester College |
| Canterbury Christ Church University | City College, Birmingham |
| Cardiff University | City College, Coventry |
| Central Lancashire (University of) | City of Bath College |
| Central School of Speech and Drama | City of Sunderland College |
| Chester (University of) | City of Westminster College |
| Chichester (University of) | Cleveland College of Art and Design |
| City University, London | College of North West London |
| Conservatoire for Dance and Drama | Craven College |
| Courtauld Institute of Art | Croydon College |
| Coventry University | Dearne Valley College |
| Cumbria (University of) | Doncaster College |
| De Montfort University | Dudley College of Technology |
| Derby (University of) | Ealing Hammersmith & West London College |
| Dundee (University of) | Craven College |
| Durham (University of) | East Riding College |
| East Anglia (University of) | East Surrey College |
| East London (University of) | Eastleigh College |
| Edge Hill University | Exeter College |
| Edinburgh Napier University | Farnborough College of Technology |
| Edinburgh (University of) | Filton College |
| Essex (University of) | Gateshead College |
| Exeter (University of) | Gloucestershire College |
| Glamorgan (University of) | Grimsby Institute |
| Glasgow (University of) | Guildford College of Further & Higher Education |
| Glasgow Caledonian University | Havering College of Further & Higher Education |
| Glasgow School of Art | Henley College Coventry |
| Gloucestershire (University of) | Hereford College of Arts |
| Glyndwr University | Herefordshire College of Technology |
| Goldsmiths College, University of London | Highbury College, Portsmouth |
| Greenwich (University of) | Hopwood Hall College |
| Guildhall School of Music & Drama | Hull College |
| Harper Adams University College | Joseph Priestley College |
| Heriot Watt University | Kirklees College |
| Hertfordshire (University of) | Lakes College - West Cumbria |
| Heythrop College | Leeds City College |
| Huddersfield (University of) | Leeds College of Art |
| Hull (University of) | Leek College of FE & School of Art |
| Imperial College London | Leicester College |
| Institute of Education | Lewisham College |
| Keele University | Lincoln College |
| Kent (University of) | Liverpool Community College |
| King’s College London | Loughborough College |
| Kingston University | Macclesfield College |
| Lampeter University | Manchester College |
| Lancaster University | Mid-Cheshire College of Further Education |
| Leeds (University of) | Moulton College |
| Leeds College of Music | New College, Durham |
| Leeds Metropolitan University | New College, Nottingham |
| Leeds Trinity University College | New College Stamford |
| Leicester (University of) | New College, Telford |
| Lincoln (University of) | Newcastle College |
| Liverpool (University of) | Newcastle-under-Lyme College |
| Liverpool Hope University | North East Surrey College of Technology |
| Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts | North East Worcestershire College |
| Liverpool John Moores University | North Lindsey College |
| London Metropolitan University | North Warwickshire and Hinckley College |
| London School of Economics and Political Science | Northbrook College, Sussex |
| London South Bank University | Northumberland College |
| Loughborough University | Oxford and Cherwell Valley College |
| Manchester (University of) | Plymouth College of Art |
| Manchester Metropolitan University | Riverside College |
| Middlesex University | Rotherham College of Arts and Technology |
| Newcastle University | Ruskin College |
| Newman University College | Sheffield College |
| Northampton (University of) | Shrewsbury College of A&T |
| Northumbria at Newcastle (University of) | Solihull College |
| Norwich University College of the Arts | Somerset College of Arts and Technology |
| Nottingham (University of) | South Cheshire College |
| Nottingham Trent University | South Downs College |
| Open University | South Nottingham College |
| Oxford (University of) | South Staffordshire College |
| Oxford Brookes University | South Tyneside College |
| Plymouth (University of) | Southampton City College |
| Portsmouth (University of) | Sparsholt College, Hampshire |
| Queen Mary, University of London | St Helens College |
| Queen’s University Belfast | Stafford College |
| Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication | Stephenson College |
| Reading (University of) | Stockport College |
| Robert Gordon University | Stoke-on-Trent College |
| Roehampton University | Stourbridge College |
| Rose Bruford College | Stratford upon Avon College |
| Royal Academy of Music | Swindon College |
| Royal Agricultural College | Tameside College |
| Royal College of Music | Trafford College |
| Royal Holloway, University of London | Tyne Metropolitan College |
| Royal Northern College of Music | Uxbridge College |
| Royal Veterinary College | Wakefield College |
| Salford (University of) | Walford and North Shropshire College |
| School of Oriental and African Studies | Walsall College |
| School of Pharmacy | Warwickshire College |
| Sheffield (University of) | West Kent College |
| Sheffield Hallam University | West Nottinghamshire College |
| Southampton (University of) | West Thames College |
| Southampton Solent University | Westminster Kingsway College |
| St Andrews (University of) | Wigan and Leigh College |
| St George's, University of London | Wiltshire College |
| St Mary's University College, Belfast | Wirral Metropolitan College |
| St Mary's University College, Twickenham | Worcester College of Technology |
| Staffordshire University | York College |
| Stirling (University of) | Yorkshire Coast College of Further & Higher Education |
| Stranmillis University College | |
| Strathclyde (University of) | |
| Sunderland (University of) | |
| Surrey (University of) | |
| Sussex (University of) | |
| Swansea Metropolitan University | |
| Swansea University | |
| Teesside (University of) | |
| Thames Valley University | |
| Trinity Laban | |
| Trinity University College, Carmarthen | |
| Ulster (University of) | |
| University Campus Suffolk | |
| University College Birmingham | |
| University College Falmouth | |
| University College for the Creative Arts | |
| University College London | |
| University College Plymouth St Mark & St John | |
| University of Arts London | |
| University of West of England, Bristol | |
| Wales Institute, Cardiff (University of) | |
| Wales, Newport (University of) | |
| Warwick (University of) | |
| Westminster (University of) | |
| Winchester (University of) | |
| Wolverhampton (University of) | |
| Worcester (University of) | |
| Writtle College | |
| York (University of) | |
| York St John University |
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20. Is it possible to change or withdraw my survey responses?
No, it is not possible to change or withdraw your survey responses once submitted.