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Undergraduate Students - 1997

Results by students' college

• Highlights
• Background
• Results- General
• Methods Notes
• Displays Lower-Division
• Displays Upper Division

The spring 1997 Undergraduate Survey asked students about their satisfaction, their use of time, why they chose to enroll at CU-Boulder, and what aspects of CU-Boulder they would most like to see changed, among other things.

In this report we present results for lower-division students and for upper-division students in each school/college and in each of four "discipline groups" within Arts and Sciences (A+S)--Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Open Option majors.

In general, the results are fairly similar across all schools/colleges/discipline groups. In this section we highlight some differences to illustrate the type of information available in the displays in this report.

For each of lower-division and upper-division students:

• A+P students tend to be less satisfied than other students with several aspects of the campus environment; Music students tend to be more satisfied. (Displays L-3 and U-3)
• A+P and Engineering students spend more time per week than other students on studying for classes. Engineering students spend more time per week than other students working at a computer. (Displays L-4 and U-4)
• Engineering students are more likely than other students to say that they chose CU-Boulder because of the quality of their major program. (Displays L-9 and U-9)
• Compared to other students, when suggesting what CU-Boulder should do to improve their chances of graduating, Humanities students are more likely to say improve the core curriculum, and A+P students are more likely to say improve course quality. (Displays L-10 and U-10)

• Social Sciences and Engineering students are more satisfied with several campus services; Humanities, A+P, and Natural Sciences less satisfied. (Display L-2)
• A+P and Humanities students tend to be less satisfied than other students with several aspects of the campus environment; Music students tend to be more satisfied (Display L-3)
• Music students report exerting more effort than other students report on studying and preparing for classes. (Display L-5)
• Compared to other lower-division students, when saying why they chose to attend CU-Boulder, Engineering, Music, and Natural Science students are more likely to cite the quality of their major program. Music students are also more likely to cite "money--the price is right," and Open Option students are more likely to cite CU-Boulder's social life. (Display L-9)
• Compared to other lower-division students, when suggesting what CU-Boulder should do to improve their chances of graduating, Music students are more likely to say create a more studious atmosphere, Natural Science students are more likely to say improve career advising, A+P students are more likely to say decrease costs and improve course quality, and Humanities students are more likely to say improve core curriculum. (Display L-10)

• Journalism, Social Science, and Music students tend to be more satisfied with several campus services. Humanities, Engineering, and Music students are more satisfied with academic advising services than other students, particularly Natural Science students. (Display U-2)
• A+P and Natural Science students tend to be less satisfied than other students with several aspects of the campus environment; Engineering, Music, and Social Science students tend to be more satisfied. For example, Engineering, Music, and Social Science students are more satisfied and Natural Science students less satisfied than other students with the availability of their advisor. (Display U-3)
• Business, Humanities, Journalism, and Social Science students spend less time per week than other students on studying for classes; Engineering and A+P students spend more time per week. (Display U-4)
• Music students report exerting more effort than the other students report on seeking out and following through with academic and career advising, seeking out faculty, and participating in extracurricular activities. (Display U-5)
• A+P and Social Science students are less likely than other students to say they choose CU-Boulder because of the quality of their major program; Journalism students are more likely than the other students to say they chose CU-Boulder because of its location and to be far from family and friends. (Display U-9)
• Compared to other upper-division students, when suggesting what CU-Boulder should do to improve their chances of graduating, Natural Science students are more likely to say reduce class size, Humanities students are more likely to say decrease the bureaucracy and improve the core curriculum, A+P students are more likely to say improve course quality, Journalism students are more likely to say decrease the cost, and Music students are more likely to say offer more honors/special programs. (Display U-10)

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Survey Purpose: To characterize undergraduates' experiences and determine what's going well and what changes should be made to improve the undergraduate experience.

Population: All degree-seeking undergraduates enrolled in CU-Boulder's six undergraduate schools and colleges in spring 1997 who had entered CU-Boulder fall 1996 or before.

Sample: 1,497 students, in 16 sampling/analysis groups: lower- and upper-division students in each of three Arts and Sciences (A+S) discipline groups (humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences); in Business, Engineering, Architecture and Planning, and Music; a lower-division A+S group of "open option" students who hadn't declared majors yet; and an upper-division Journalism group. Sampling fractions ranged from 5% for several groups in A&S to 50% in Music; these different sampling fractions were used in order to achieve approximately equal numbers of sample members in each group.

Response rate: The total response rate was 43%. However, the response rate equivalent is 56%. This is the response rate we estimate we would have achieved had we remailed a questionnaire to and phoned all students who did not complete the questionnaire during the first month; instead we did remail and phone follow-ups with less than of the non-respondents due to cost considerations. Response rates for the 16 college groups typically ranged between 40-45%; exceptions include 54% for upper division business students and 30% for upper division humanities students.

Reporting: A full report on the all-campus results can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.colorado.edu/pba/surveys/ug/97/rpt0.htm

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There are twelve displays for each of lower-division  and upper-division respondents (labeled 1 to 12):

Display 1: Use of 23 campus services.

Display 2: Satisfaction with 23 campus services.

Display 3: Satisfaction with 42 aspects of the undergraduate experience.

Display 4: Amount of time students spend on 12 activities.

Display 5: Amount of effort students exert toward 8 activities.

Display 6: Whether the amount of time being spent on each of 12 activities is more than what was expected.

Display 7: Whether the amount of time being spent on each of 12 activities is less than what was expected.

Display 8: Reasons for attending college.

Display 9: Reasons for attending CU-Boulder.

Display 10: What things should change at CU-Boulder.

Display 11: The personal issue with the greatest potential for preventing one from getting a degree.

Display 12: Ratings of the amount of academic challenge, likelihood of getting a CU-Boulder degree, the extent to which students would choose
CU-Boulder again.

Displays 1-11 show the overall ratings for the campus. Ratings for each college/discipline group are shown only if their ratings differ from those for
the overall campus.

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Survey Description: The Undergraduate Survey consists of the nationally normed Student Opinion Survey (SOS), plus 30 locally-developed questions. The SOS is developed, scored, and normed by American College Testing (ACT). The survey asked about:

• Students' use of and satisfaction with several services (e.g., academic advising, financial aid)
• Students' satisfaction with several aspects of the undergraduate experience
• How students use their time
• Why students are in college and why they chose to enroll at CU-Boulder
• The aspects of CU-Boulder students would most like to see changed
• The personal issue with the greatest potential for preventing students from getting a degree

Data collection proceeded in three waves:

• Wave 1: questionnaire and reminder postcard mailed to all 1,497 sample members at end of February, 1997
• Wave 2: re-mail and phone reminders, end of March 1997, to a sample of 258, or 27% of those who had not responded (excluding known bad addresses) as of that date
• Wave 3: phone interviews, beginning of May, to the 165 students (64%) in the re-mail sample who hadn't yet responded. Interviewers asked six key questions from the survey and encouraged students to complete and return their surveys quickly.

• Wave 1: 37%, 554 of the 1,497 students in the sample responded in the first wave
• Wave 2: 32%, 82 of the 258 sampled for this wave (includes some respondents also reached by telephone in Wave 3)
• Wave 3: 39% completed the phone interview, 42 of the 165 attempted were reached and interviewed

We compared the responses of the respondents in each wave to determine if students who didn't complete the written questionnaire (Wave 3 phone respondents) had different attitudes and experiences than students who did complete the written questionnaire but only after several promptings (Wave 2 respondents), and whether Wave 2 and Wave 3 respondents were different from students who responded right away and didn't need any prompting (Wave 1 respondents). Wave 3 and Wave 2 respondents are very similar in their expressed attitudes, so we can assume that the Wave 2 sample members who did complete the questionnaire are typical of all the Wave 2 sample members and all non-respondents. However, Wave 2 and 3 respondents are slightly different from Wave 1 respondents (i.e., they are less likely to expect to get a CU-Boulder degree, less likely to be working for pay, and have a lower CU GPA than wave 1 respondents). Therefore, using multiple follow-ups in order to get Waves 2 and 3 sample members to respond was important in terms of making sure that we heard from a representative sample of students.

We weighted all analyses to take into account the different sampling fractions, response rates, and differential follow-up.

All figures in Displays 1-12 are based on responses from the following unweighted numbers of
students:
                                     Lower-Division                  Upper-division
          A+P                           28                                  29
          A+S, Humanities               37                                  22
          A+S, Natural Sci              42                                  59
          A+S, Open Option              40                                 n/a
          A+S, Social Sci               39                                  32
          Business                      54                                  71
          Engineering                   50                                  53
          Journalism                    n/a                                 24
          Music                         29                                  27

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Last revision 06/04/04