To View Survey Results:

Office of Planning & Budget
3rd Floor, Kerr Hall
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Phone: 831.459.4302
FAX: 831.459.2619
Email: sirinda@ucsc.edu

2004 Majors Survey

Description:

The Majors Survey was designed to solicit student feedback specifically about the quality of the academic programs and the value of their experiences in their majors. It was developed in consultation with the Vice Provosts for Academic Affairs and Undergraduate Education, and draws on items from the literature on educational assessment and student engagement. Topics included how and when students chose their major(s), teaching and advising, the curriculum, educational opportunities and climate in the department sponsoring the major, self-evaluations of progress toward academic goals as a result of experiences in the major, and overall satisfaction. A pdf copy of the survey can be viewed here.

Method:

In Spring 2004 all UC Santa Cruz students who had an officially declared major as of the third week of the Winter 2004 term were invited to participate in an online survey. Initial invitations and four weekly reminders containing login and password information were sent electronically to students’ campus assigned email addresses, and flyers with the survey url were posted around campus. As an incentive for participation students who completed the survey were entered into a random drawing for one of three i-pod minis.

Results:

Overall 6,822 students were solicited and 2,018 responded, for a response rate of 30%. By major response rates ranged from 13% to 50%.

This website will generate descriptive results including the number of responses, response rates, frequency tables and graphs, and means for each item. Major Profiles will display the results of the entire survey for a specific major alongside overall campus wide statistics for comparison. Responses from all declared pre-majors have been combined with their associated majors (e.g., pre-psychology and psychology majors are treated as a single major “psychology”), all individual majors have been combined, responses from majors that have recently changed their name have been combined under the current name (e.g., Film and Digital Media and Film and Video majors are combined as Film and Digital Media, and the responses from combined majors in departments that sponsor them have been combined with the single majors in that department (e.g., all of the combined majors sponsored by Latin American/Latino Studies have been combined with the single LALS majors as Latin American/Latino Studies and combined LALS). Because the numbers of Applied Physics and Physics (Astrophysics) majors is so small they were combined with Physics majors. Majors in other departments sponsoring multiple majors remain separate.

It is also possible to Drill Down into the data and display results for selected subgroups of respondents within a specific major on the basis of admit type (freshman vs. transfer), gender, or ethnic group. Results for subgroups will be displayed alongside results for all respondents in the major. Results will not be displayed for any drill down query that results in fewer than 5 survey respondents. It is recommended that users not drill down on more than one criteria at a time, especially for small majors, as it is likely to result in too few cases to report.