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Through our monthly emails, we round up news, views and resources on all things education policy and quality in one place - covering work underway to support great education, what's coming up, and ways to get involved.

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What's new in the NSS 2023?

The National Student Survey (NSS) is a UK-wide survey of undergraduate students in their final year of study that has run every year for nearly 20 years. As a regulated higher education provider, we're obliged to take part and promote the survey, but we go further at Warwick and make full use of students' feedback to enhance the quality of their learning experience. Our previous success in NSS helped towards the Sunday Times naming Warwick as University of the Year for Teaching Quality 2022Link opens in a new window.

Questionnaire Changes

The Office for Students (OfS) has been reviewing the NSS since 2020 to ensure it remains fit for purpose in the context of its changing approach to regulating English higher education. Last year, the OfS tested new alternative questions and response options and they have officially implemented these changes for 2023:

  • All core questions have been posed as questions rather than statements, e.g. 'Staff are good at explaining things' has been changed to 'How good are teaching staff at explaining things?'.
  • The 5-point Likert scale has been replaced by a 4-point question-specific scale. This means that the generic response scale: Definitely Agree, Mostly Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Mostly Disagree, Definitely Disagree, Not Applicable has been omitted and each question's scale will be different depending on the phrasing of the question. For the question above, the scale is: Very good, Good, Not very good, Not at all good, This does not apply to me.
  • The questions on learning community have been removed and replaced by one question regarding mental health wellbeing and one question regarding freedom of expression:
    • How well communicated was information about your university/college's mental wellbeing support services?
    • During your studies, how free did you feel to express your ideas, opinions and beliefs?
  • Additional skill-related questions have been added to the learning opportunities survey area:
    • To what extent does your course have the right balance of directed and independent study?
    • How well has your course developed your knowledge and skills that you think you will need for the future?
  • The overall satisfaction question has been removed.
  • The eligibility of students who answer the healthcare, allied health and clinical practice placements survey area has been expanded to include students on any healthcare, medical or social work-related courses. The course does not have to be NHS-funded or include NHS placements.

Institutional Choices and Changes

This year, we have not added any optional banks of questions for Warwick students to answer. We have still added two provider-specific questions to mitigate the loss of the question on overall satisfaction:

  • I would recommend the University to future students. (Scale question)
  • What is the one thing we could have done to improve your overall satisfaction? (Open question)

The NSS opens for Warwick students in the week commencing 6th February 2023 and runs to 30th April 2023. Our promotional campaign is focused on the first six weeks through February and March.

The Office for Students has not changed the threshold publication rates, meaning that we still need to obtain a 50% response rate and 10 respondents for results to be released tat course, departmental and subject level. However, we have set our sights on an institutional response rate of 65% overall as we build back towards pre-pandemic levels of completion in the range of 75% to 78%.

How EPQ and the Student Communications team will help you get there

To support colleagues promoting the NSS in their departments, we'll be running NSS staff briefings to further discuss these new changes, how we intend to share response rates, and what infrastructure is in place to help you achieve our response rate targets. We will also recap the rules on inappropriate influence. These briefings will take place on 19th January from 11:30 to 12:30 online, and 23rd January from 10:30 to 11:30 on campus in Humanities 0.60. If you would like to join us, please let us know hereLink opens in a new window.

Our NSS webpagesLink opens in a new window have been updated, including a briefing for staff promoting the surveyLink opens in a new window, the full question set for Warwick studentsLink opens in a new window, key datesLink opens in a new window, and other useful information for NSS 2023. Please keep your eye on these pages as they'll be continuously updated throughout the survey!

Thu 12 Jan 2023, 10:53 | Tags: NSS