School Survey, College Survey, University Survey

Benefits of Online Surveys

Did you know that online surveys offer many advantages over paper or phoned based surveys? Read more...

Quick Tips

  • Offer incentives such as prizes
  • Keep it short
  • Keep it relevant to your students, teachers, or parents
  • Focus on what students, teachers, or parents find important
  • Cover both what students, teachers, or parents like and dislike
  • Preserve the confidentiality of individual responses

Who should you survey in school surveys?

How can students be surveyed?

There are many types of online surveys that can be conducted with students.

  • Course Evaluations Survey - The students evaluate the contents of the course and the instructor who taught the course.
  • School Climate Survey - The students evaluate how they feel at school and how they feel about their school generally.
  • Graduation Exit Survey - The graduating students provide information on themselves and on their plans for the future, i.e. find work, continue school, etc.
  • School Entry Survey - The incoming students provide information on themselves and on their expectations of their new school.
  • Post Graduation Survey - The students provide information on the their labour market status and/or education/training since their graduation. Ideally, these surveys should be conducted multiple times after graduation to see the actual progression of students over time. For example, once 6 months after graduation, 1 year after graduation, 2 years after graduation, etc.
  • Event Feedback Survey - The students provide feedback on a school event in which they took part.
  • Event Planning Survey - The students provide feedback on what events they would like the school to organise.
  • Extra Curricular Activities Feedback Survey - The students provide feedback on extra curricular activities or after school activities in which they took part.
  • Extra Curricular Activities Planning Survey - The students provide feedback on what extra curricular activities or after school activities they would like to take part in.
  • School Nutrition Survey - The students provide feedback on the types of foods they would like to eat at school.
  • School Violence\Bullying Survey - The students provide feedback on either on how they are victimized by violence, and/or the violence they see within the school.
  • School Drug/Alcohol Abuse Survey - The students provide feedback on their use of drugs and/or alcohol.

How can the faculty and professors be consulted in school surveys?

There are many types of online surveys that can be conducted with the faculty.

  • Process Change Surveys - Before making any important changes a survey should be conducted to gather the thoughts of the faculty and teachers on the changes. A similar survey should also be conducted once the changes have been implemented for a while.
  • Event Planning Survey - The faculty and teachers provide feedback on what events they would like the school to organise.
  • Extra Curricular Activities Planning Survey - The faculty and teachers provide feedback on what extra curricular activities or after school activities they would like to take part in.

How can student parents be consulted in school surveys?

There are many types of online surveys that can be conducted with the parents of students.

  • Parent Satisfaction Survey - The parents evaluate how they feel about the school services provided to parents and evaluate how the school and teachers communicate with them.
  • School Nutrition Survey - The parents provide feedback on the types of foods they would like their kids to eat at school.
  • Event Feedback Survey - The parents provide feedback on a school event in which they took part.
  • Event Planning Survey - The parents provide feedback on what events they would like the school to organise.
  • Extra Curricular Activities Planning Survey - The parents provide feedback on what extra curricular activities or after school activities they would like to take part in.
  • Voluntary Work/Parent Involvement Survey - The parents provide feedback on what type of voluntary work they are willing to do for the school, and how they are doing in the voluntary work they already accomplish.
  • School Friendliness Survey - The U.S. Department of Education advises schools to conduct these surveys on a regular basis. They describe this type of survey as follows "The relative family-friendliness of a school refers to how inviting it feels to the families of its students: do families feel they would be welcome to ask questions, to contribute somehow in their children's classroom, to make suggestions, or to otherwise support their children's education?" Here is what they have to say when comparing personal interviews and focus groups with surveys, "...surveys are a much more efficient method that can still yield good results." For more information click here.

How often should school surveys be conducted

Depending on the type of survey, the survey should be conducted once or twice a year in order to see if there is a trend or a progression. For surveys such as a School Climate Survey and a School Nutrition Survey, it might be preferable to conduct the survey once at the beginning of the school year and once at the end of the school year. That ensures that the same students and teachers respond to the survey on both occasions. It is easier to spot trends when the participants responding to the survey are the same.

Interceptum allows you to copy an existing survey and all its questions. A new set of data can then be gathered for each period in which the survey is conducted.

Have a printed copy of the survey available

A print copy of the survey is especially important for parent surveys. Not all parents have a computer or access to the Internet. In an effort to reduce costs, you should strongly encourage parents to complete the survey online. One good way of doing this is offering prizes.

With Interceptum, you can print out a paper copy of your survey and mail it home or send it home with the students. Your staff can then use the completed paper copy to enter the results via our web site. The results will then be included with the results collected online.

Limit expectations

When conducting surveys with students and parents, it is important not to raise expectations too high. If you raise certain points, they will expect you to act on them. If you fail to act, they will think your organisation lacks consideration towards them. Furthermore, any future attempt to consult them will be met with cynicism.

Preserve the confidentiality of individual responses in school surveys

Students and teachers rarely feel comfortable criticizing their school, teacher, or employer. If you provide them with the guaranty that their answers will remain confidential, it will increase their level of comfort and they will answer more truthfully. Obtaining complete and accurate information is paramount. If you get misleading information because they do not feel comfortable when answering the survey, you might take no corrective actions (no one complained), or take action on more benign issues because no one raised the more important and controversial issues.

As an example, a survey on bullying in the school or work place harassment should be conducted in a way that guarantees anonymity to students and teachers. Because these issues are so sensitive, you will only get accurate information by providing anonymity.

Preserving confidentiality for students and teachers is generally accomplished by mandating an independent third party such as Interceptum to conduct the online survey and compile the results. You can draft your own questionnaire, and ask us to collect the data on your behalf. We will provide aggregate results which cannot be traced to individual participants.

At the beginning of a survey conducted with Intercept, a privacy policy can be displayed. This privacy policy would state in clear and simple terms that only the staff at Interceptum will have access to non-aggregated statistics, and that only aggregate statistics will be provided to your school.

Increase the response rate in school surveys

For most student and teacher surveys, the key factor that will increase participation is your ability to communicate the importance of the survey to your students and teachers . You have to let them know you are doing this to improve the quality of their school.

Keeping the survey within a reasonable length will also help the participation rate. If the survey is too long, you run the risk that participants will abandon it mid-way through. Preferably, the online survey platform you use should offer the option of letting participants save their work and come back to it later. Interceptum offers such a feature.

Another way to boost the participation rate is to give incentives or prizes: diner for two, money, gift certificates, tickets to shows, electronic equipment, etc.

Be transparent

Provide all the aggregate statistical results to students and teachers. When providing samples of comments, do not only select the positive comments and leave negative ones out. The absence of negative comments reflects poorly on the credibility of the results.

If you gave prizes, makes sure you inform all students and teachers of who won the prizes.

Follow up with an action plan

When appropriate, set out a follow-up time-frame that includes when the results will be made available and when the action plan will be presented. If possible, the action plan should also include time-lines. Remember that once you have raised issues, students and teachers will expect concrete action within a reasonable time-frame. Failing to deliver can cause further frustration.

Creating your Student, Teacher, or Parent school surveys with Interceptum

If your survey deals with sensitive subjects, we recommend that you mandate Interceptum to administer the survey for you. You can draft your own questionnaire that we will review. We will create the online version, send invitations to participants, and compile results for you. That way you can guarantee anonymity and obtain accurate results for your sensitive subjects.

The Interceptum online survey platform offers a wide selection of features to create student, teacher, or parent surveys. You will find all the necessary information to create and deploy your survey with Interceptum on our web site.

Creating your school survey with Interceptum is very easy. All you need to do is follow these simple steps. We also provide a printable getting started guide and a video getting started guide.

  • Create a free account
  • Create your survey and questions, and test it to make sure your skip logic is correct
  • Subscribe to Interceptum
  • Send email invitations to your participants
  • Create a report and see the results

Conclusion

Schools can use an online school survey to obtain information that is critical to their success. Ideally, these online school surveys should be conducted on a regular basis in order to monitor progress and the impact of any changes you may have made based on the results of earlier surveys.

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