Using Surveys for Quality Assurance in Higher Education - Challenges and Solutions |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Heide Schmidtmann (University of Duisburg-Essen, Center for Higher Education Development and Quality Enhancement (CHEDQE)) |
| Coordinator 2 | Dr Rene Krempkow (Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin) |
The increasing availability of accessible and affordable survey tools provides ample opportunities to gather data on individuals’ subjective perspective. More and more, such data are used as evidence in practical fields of application including quality assurance in higher education. In post-Bologna Europe, the newly revised European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ESG) emphasize the importance of data including survey data from students and staff as they help stakeholders at all levels to make informed decisions (ENQA et al. 2015, Standard 1.7).
Social scientists who collect and analyze data for quality assurance purposes at institutions of higher education face a triple challenge: to collect valid and reliable survey data (Ansmann & Seyfried 2018), to coordinate the questionnaires with evaluators within the quality assurance departments (Ganseuer & Pistor 2016) and to ensure the practical applicability of the results (Rousseau 2006). Striking a balance between scientific rigor and practical utility concerns the entire survey lifecycle (Survey Research Center 2016). Issues include, but are not limited to the following:
• Questionnaire design: Which concepts should be measured? Who should be involved in the questionnaire design process and how?
• Data collection: How to ensure data validity despite limited financial and human resources as well as data protection requirements?
• Data analysis: Who is the target audience? How to analyze the data to be useful for quality assurance while adhering to principles of good scientific practice? How to strike a balance between data protection requirements and loss of information?
• Application: How to increase the acceptance and application of the results by decision-makers?
We welcome papers from researchers and evaluation practitioners working at the interface between data collection and application for quality assurance in higher education. Ideally, the papers describe examples of good practice that address the aforementioned issues.
References
Ansmann, M. & Seyfried, M. (2018): Qualitätsmanagement als Treiber einer evidenzbasierten Qualitätsentwicklung von Studium und Lehre? Zeitschrift für Hochschulentwicklung, 13(1), 233-252.
ENQA et al. (2015): Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). Brussels, BE.
Ganseuer, C. & Pistor, P. (2016). Auf dem Weg zur Qualitätskultur? Interne Qualitätsmanagementsysteme: Internationale Tendenzen und Nationale Entwicklungsfelder. Wissenschaftsmanagement, 5, 37-41.
Rousseau, D. (2006): Is there such a thing as evidence based management? Academy of Management Review, 31(2), 256–269.
Survey Research Center. (2016). Guidelines for Best Practice in Cross-Cultural Surveys. Ann Arbor, MI.