Campus-Wide Surveys

ACU regularly conducts campus-wide surveys for institutional and department use. If you would like more information about any of the following surveys, please contact our office.

National Survey of Student Engagement (Each Spring Since 2011)

National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is a survey designed to measure and gauge student engagement. Through its student survey, *The College Student Report*, NSSE annually collects information at hundreds of four-year colleges and universities about first-year and senior students' participation in programs and activities that institutions provide for their learning and personal development. The results provide an estimate of how undergraduates spend their time and what they gain from attending college.

NSSE provides participating institutions with a variety of reports that compare their students' responses with those of students at self-selected groups of comparison institutions. Comparisons are available for ten Engagement Indicators, six High-Impact Practices, and all individual survey questions.

Student Satisfaction Inventory (Fall Odd Years Since 2013)

The Student Satisfaction inventory (SSI) (Ruffalo Noel-Levitz) measures not only how satisfied students are with the college, but also which issues are important to them.

The survey asks students to rate 73 items for both satisfaction and importance on diverse topics affecting the entire campus, including academics, student life, admissions, financial aid, and security. The survey inquiries about student experience on campus, offering a 1-7 scale for Importance and Satisfaction, as rated by the students. The SSI
calculates the difference between the average satisfaction score and the average importance for each item; this difference is referred to as the “performance gap.” A large performance gap for an item indicates a relatively low level of satisfaction for an item of relatively high importance.

Thriving Quotient (Fall Even Years Since 2018)

The Thriving Quotient (TQ) is an instrument that was developed to measure the academic, social, and psychological aspects of a student’s college experience that are most predictive of academic success, institutional fit, satisfaction with college, and ultimately graduation. The 23 items on the TQ cluster onto 5 scales:

• Engaged Learning– a measure of the degree to which students are meaningfully processing what happens in class, energized by what they are learning, and continuing to think about it outside of class
• Academic Determination– a measure of students’ goal-directedness, investment of effort, and regulation of their own learning and use of time
• Positive Perspective– a measure of students’ optimism, and explanatory style
• Social Connectedness– a measure of students’ involvement in healthy relationships and social support networks, whether on or off-campus
• Diverse Citizenship– a measure of students’ desire to make a difference in the community around them, as well as their openness to differences in others

The TQ was developed over a period of five years by Dr. Laurie Schreiner, Professor of Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University.