National Student Survey (NSS)

• What is the NSS?
• How can I access NSS data?
• Disciplines
• What is the NSS used for?
• Points to consider when using NSS data
• What about postgraduate students?
• NSS in the Biosciences
• Further reading

What is the NSS?

Conducted at institutions across the UK since 2005 the NSS asks final year undergraduate students to feedback on their experience of their course. The survey is conducted across all publicly funded higher education institutions in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and participating institutions in Scotland. Since 2008 Further Education Colleges with directly funded higher education students in England have also been able to participate. The NSS was commissioned by Hefce and is administered by Ipsos MORI.

There are 22 questions in the NSS, relating to the following areas:

• Teaching on my Course
• Assessment and Feedback
• Academic Support
• Organisation and Management
• Learning Resources
• Personal Development
• Overall Satisfaction

Responses are on a Likert scale of 1-5 (5 – Definitely agree, 4 – Mostly agree, 3 – Neither agree nor disagree, 2 – Mostly disagree, 1 – Definitely disagree), download a full list of questions. Students also have the opportunity to provide a written comment highlighting particularly positive or negative aspects of their course at the end of the survey (these responses are only available to the institution). Results are broken down by institution and by discipline.

NHS placement students are asked an additional 6 questions about their placement and institutions have the option of including additional questions on a number of other areas, for example Careers, Course Delivery and Learning Community (available in the full list of questions). The responses to these optional questions are not made publicly available and released only to the institution.

Most league tables of student satisfaction refer to the score a course receives for question 22; "Overall I am satisfied with the quality of the course".

Students complete the survey online between mid January and the end of April in their final year and are able to opt-out of the survey if they wish to do so. Ipsos MORI follow up non-respondents to the online survey by post and then telephone.

How can I access NSS data?

NSS data is available from various sources. The publicly available data brings together the responses to all 22 questions for each course and institution taking part in the survey.

Hefce - The NSS section of the Hefce website brings together summaries of the survey results and some discussion pieces on the NSS. Full data sets are also available from Hefce; these contain extensive student demographic information (e.g. gender, domicile) and student identification number and are therefore available only after a research proposal has been approved by Hefce. Further details are available at www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/nss/panel

Unistats - Unistats is the "student friendly" face of NSS data. Data is available for the responses to all 22 questions by course and institution alongside a variety of other information such as the student breakdown of a course (e.g. gender, number of full and part time students) and employment prospects.

Institutions - Institutions have access to data from their own institution. Institutional data contains some demographic information, giving institutions the opportunity to see how different student populations (for example UK and International Students) have responded to questions. Institutional data also contains the free text responses and responses to any additional questions the institution has chosen to include. Data is available from the NSS results website if you have been given access to your institutional results.

Disciplines

NSS results are available on an institutional and discipline basis. Disciplines are divided up by JACS codes (Joint Academic Coding of Subjects - the system used in the UK to identify the discipline coverage of programmes and modules, it also forms the basis of the UCAS coding system). The following disciplines used in the NSS are disciplines wholly or partly covered by the UK Centre for Bioscience:

• Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology
• Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmacy
• Biology
• Zoology
• Genetics
• Microbiology
• Molecular Biology, Biophysics and Biochemistry
• Others in Biological Sciences
• Sports Science
• Animal Science
• Forestry
• Food and Beverage studies
• Agriculture and others in Veterinary Sciences, Agriculture and related subjects

What is the NSS used for?

The NSS is used within institutions, departments, the education sector and by the "interested public" in a number of ways:

• NSS data may be used to rank institutions and courses according to student satisfaction. This ranking could be across the UK or within groups of institutions, such as the Russell Group or 1994 Group.
• Institutions may use NSS data to identify differences in student experience on courses within the institution.
• The results of the NSS may be used to identify areas in which students feel they need more support or areas which could be enhanced
• Prospective students may use the data to influence their choice of institution or course.

NSS data may also be used within institutions and departments to enhance the student experience through changing teaching or departmental practice. If you are thinking about changing teaching practices as a result of NSS data you may find the following webpages and resources from the Centre useful.

• Our Audit Tools are designed to help teachers consider the content and design of a course or programme with respect to a particular issue and where improvements could be made. Audits available include: assessment; induction and work related learning.
• We have webpages focusing on assessment and feedback, creativity and problem solving which bring together information and resources from the Centre and links to further resources.
• Interested in what enthuses students? Our Student Award in 2005 and 2008 asked students "what makes a good bioscience lecturer" and "what makes the best learning experience for you?".
• Our Student Short Guides have hints and tips for students on various topics, such as assessment, using feedback, which encourage them to think about various aspects of learning and teaching.

Points to consider when using NSS data

• For the responses to a course surveyed to be made public there must be at least 23 responses and a 50% response rate for a course. So courses with low student numbers or a low response rate will not be included (within institutional results the threshold is 10 responses).
• The JACS discipline categories may not match the title of some degree courses, for example there is no specific category for Ecology. Institutions can also override these JACS categories and place a course under a different code.
• The JACS codes encompass a number of discipline areas, for example Molecular Biology, Biophysics and Biochemistry, so if an institution offers courses in both Molecular Biology and Biochemistry the responses from students on both of these courses will be grouped together. Institutions may choose to disaggregate these scores for their own internal data.
• Joint honours students have their response recorded for both subjects they are undertaking. For example a student undertaking a joint honours in Microbiology and Pathology would have their response recorded for both "Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology" and "Microbiology" within that institution.
• Particular groups of students may respond differently to NSS questions. As an example, female students may, on average, rate their experience of teaching and learning more highly than male students. If a course has more female students than male then the course may be more highly rated for teaching and learning than an equivalent course where there are a higher proportion of males on the course.
• Following on from the above point, differences between the satisfaction ratings for institutions and courses may be due more to the demographic make-up of an institution or course than differences in the learning and teaching (see Surridge, P. (2008) The National Student Survey 2005-2007: Findings and Trends. Report to the Higher Education Funding Council for England)

What about Postgraduate students?

The Higher Education Academy runs the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) and Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) which collect feedback from postgraduate taught and research students. Find out more about both surveys from the Higher Education Academy.

NSS evaluation in the Biosciences

The UK Centre for Bioscience is hoping to undertake some baseline research of the 2009 NSS data. This will involve:

• Looking at student responses to the NSS by discipline within the discipline areas listed above;
• Interrogating the full data set to investigate any differences in responses from female and male students within the discipline areas listed above; and
• Interrogating the full data set to investigate any differences in the responses to the NSS between UK and International students.

Fielding, A.F., Dunleavy, P.J. and Langan, A.M. (2010) Effective use of the UK's National Student (Satisfaction) Survey (NSS) data in science and engineering subjects. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 34 (3), 347–369, may be of interest to colleagues across the STEM disciplines.

‘I can’t believe it’s not better’: The Paradox of NSS scores for Art & Design, by David Vaughan and Mantz Yorke (2009). This research, funded by the Art Design and Media Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy and the HEAD Trust, undertook a review of NSS in Art Design and Media courses 2007. The report brings together a number of issues surrounding the NSS relevant to all disciplines and also compares responses across a number of discipline areas, one of which was Biology. The 2007 data showed Biology ranking in the top 5 of 22 disciplines for: Teaching and learning, Academic support, Organisation and management and Overall satisfaction. However, Biology ranked in the bottom five for assessment and feedback. Read or download the full report.

Further reading

Much of the information on this page came from the following sites:

• Languages Linguistics and Areas Studies Subject Centre webpage on the National Student Survey authored by John Canning
• National Student Survey webpage

EvidenceNet has a number of resources focusing on the NSS. These include summaries which highlight the "take-home" messages in key NSS papers including: Surridge, P. (2008) The National Student Survey 2005-2007: findings and trends; and Surridge, P. (2009) The National Student Survey three years on: what have we learned - a summary

Higher Education Academy NSS webpage has a number of resources including:

• Exploring the NSS: Assessment and Feedback Issues
• Higher Education Surveys for Enhancement Conference 2010, resources and presentations from the event

How has NSS data been used?

• National Student Survey Institutional Case Studies – 12 case studies from a variety of institutions to demonstrating how they are using data from the NSS to enhance the student learning experience.
• Ipsos MORI have a number of case studies on their website illustrating how NSS data has been used.