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Bursar's Office Survey - Sping 2003

Results for Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Prepared by the Office of Planning, Budget, and Analysis March 14, 2003

The Bursar's Office Survey was designed to collect information that could be used by the Bursar's Office to improve customer service. The survey was administered in February 2003 to stratified random samples of CU-Boulder undergraduate and graduate students, and to a random sample of parents of CU-Boulder freshmen and sophomores. The questionnaire for students was administered over the internet and consisted of 21 items of several types, including multiple-response and open-ended items. The questionnaire for parents was administered through the U.S. Mail and consisted of 26 items, most of which paralleled those of the student questionnaire. This report describes results of the student survey. Results of the parent survey will be provided in a subsequent report.

The percentage of the sample who responded to the survey was comparable to percentages observed in recent surveys on the CU-Boulder campus. Information on sample sizes and response rates, by student level, is provided in Table 1.

Table 1. Response Rates, by Student Level

Results are reported for undergraduates, graduates, and for the total group of students. Total group statistics (n-counts, percentages, and means) are weighted to adjust statistically for both differential sampling fractions and non-response within undergraduate and graduate subgroups

Summary of Results

Billing questions. Most students get their billing questions answered via Personal Look-Up Services (PLUS), or by telephoning or visiting the Bursar's Office. Seventy-four percent of students indicated that they use PLUS to answer billing questions; 12% indicated that they use a combination of PLUS, phone calls, and in-person visits.

FERPA awareness. Most students (66%) were not aware of FERPA before participating in the survey.

Reasons for contacting Bursar's Office. Tuition and fees were cited as the most important reason for contacting the Bursar's Office by a majority of students (83%). Eleven percent of students reported that they contact the Bursar's Office concerning both tuition and fees and financial aid.

Phoning/visiting the Bursar's Office. Equal percentages of students (45%) reported phoning the Bursar's Office between one and two times each semester, or not at all. Only 8% of students reported phoning between 3 and 6 times each semester. Fifty-nine percent of students reported visiting the Bursar's Office once or twice each semester.

Bills. Most students (71%) preferred to receive their bill via U.S. Mail, and 62% reported that they were aware of the Billing Address Option. A majority of students (68%) indicated that they read some or most of the information that is enclosed with bills. Students reported that bills are typically paid by either the students themselves (46%) or by parents/guardians (40%). About 22% of students reported that they are signed up for E-bill.

Aspects of the Bursar's Office. Students rated the Bursar's Office highest in the areas of accuracy of information received (mean = 3.9 on a five-point scale with 5 being the highest), courtesy of staff (3.8), professionalism of staff (3.8), and completeness of information received (3.8). Somewhat lower ratings were given to ease of finding information on the Bursar's Office website (3.4) and quality of the E-bill option (3.4).

Direct deposit. Thirty-three percent of students reported that they use direct deposit for their refunds. Similar percentages reported that they did not use direct deposit or did not receive refunds (34% and 32%, respectively).

Payment options. U.S. Mail and cashiers' windows were reported as the most common payment options (48% and 24%, respectively). About 10% of students indicated that they use both of these options.

Click here for complete results. They are displayed in tabular form, beginning on page 3 of this Word document.

Extended-Response Items

Extended response items are presented in their entirety in the last section of this report (pages 14-39). In addition, a summary of the percentages of students providing non-informative comments (e.g., "no," "none," "didn't know," "wasn't sure") is provided.

Results of Incentive Experiment

The Bursar's Office gave Planning, Budget, and Analysis staff permission to investigate the effects of incentives on student participation. Two-thirds of the undergraduate and graduate samples were offered a chance at winning one of two $500 scholarships for participating in the survey. Students were randomly assigned to either an incentive or non-incentive group. The response rates for undergraduates in these two groups were very similar (38% incentive, 36% non-incentive). Graduate students were more likely to respond to the survey when offered an incentive (55% response rate for incentive group vs. 48% for non-incentive group). These results are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2. Response Rates for Incentive and Non-incentive Groups

In general, respondents in the incentive and non-incentive groups did not differ substantially with respect to such characteristics as race/ethnicity, gender, cumulative GPA, and CU-Boulder college.

There are some differences between the incentive and non-incentive groups with respect to responses on particular items. For example, graduate respondents who were offered an incentive rated the Bursar's Office somewhat higher on 10 of the 11 items in the "Aspects of the Bursar's Office" section of the questionnaire. The differences on these items between the incentive and non-incentive groups were not statistically significant. This result is somewhat puzzling. A similar result was not found for undergraduate respondents.

The results of the incentive experiment suggest that reduced incentives, or none at all, might have only minimal effects on the response rates and responses of undergraduates. Such reasoning may not necessarily pertain to graduate students, however. Planning, Budget, and Analysis plans to conduct additional experiments concerning the effects of incentives.

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Last revision 07/08/05