The Senior Survey and IRAP

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Author: Jeremy Childs

Miriam Subbiah

After four years at Occidental, the graduating class receives one final opportunity to tell the school about their experiences through the College Senior Survey, a comprehensive college assessment from UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). The survey, part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), is administered every three years during commencement rehearsal, the survey examines more than 500 variables over dozens of topics ranging from housing and health services to academics and student life.

The survey is managed by the Office of Institutional Research, Advancement and Planning (IRAP), whose multifaceted job includes keeping Occidental’s administration in touch with its student body.

“IRAP plays an integral role in advancing Oxy as an institution. We are responsible for directing the college’s accreditation efforts, assessment programs of the various divisions, the academic program reviews, administering surveys, analyzing and reporting all manner of institutional data, and guiding strategic planning and advancement efforts,” IRAP Data Analyst and politics major Zak Buschbach (junior) said via email.

Buschbach, along with Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs Hanna Spinosa, make up the entire IRAP office. Though it is one of the college’s smallest departments, IRAP duties include providing indicators used by the Steering Committee in drafting the five year Strategic Plans, analyzing internally-gathered data and reporting it both to the college community and external agencies and assessing how the college fulfills its college-wide learning outcomes.

IRAP also administers several major surveys throughout the year, including the class evaluations, CIRP surveys at the beginning and end of one’s first-year and the aforementioned senior survey. The first-year and senior surveys are both part of CIRP, one of the largest and most frequently cited research programs in higher education. This past year, Occidental was one of 94 United States institutions that participated the CIRP College Senior Survey.

“The value of doing survey research is that you really need a longitudinal design…we have [first-year] survey data, then their end of their first year data and then their senior survey data. Then once they leave, we did a one-year-out [cohort] and then a five-year-out cohort alumni survey so we can start tracking longer term outcomes of student success past Occidental. I think it’s been really successful. We’ve gotten over 50 percent response rate, which is amazing for surveys,” Spinosa said.

In addition to the comprehensive surveys that bookend the college experience, IRAP has also made plans to administer the new Diverse Learning Environment (DLE) Survey next semester.

“With the whole CODE demand, the administration has decided to [use] a diversity campus climate survey, the only one of its kind in higher education [research]. We are going to administer that in the spring to the entire campus,” Spinosa said.

Spinosa emphasized the DLE as an opportunity for the student body to directly influence the administration’s response to their concerns.

“The DLE is really the administration’s request for students to respond and let us know how they feel about the campus climate on diversity issues. It’s anonymous but it’s only going to give us good information if we have representative response rates,” Spinosa said. Spinosa indicated that the survey will only prove useful if over 70 percent of the student body responds.

Data from CIRP surveys allows the institution to look at change within the surveyed group of students over their college years and analyze the implications of broader trend data for the institution as a whole. It also provides quantitative data to compare with peer institutions, allowing the administration to know where it excels and where it lags behind.

Buschbach shared his input on how he interprets the results of this past year’s Senior Survey.

“The data clearly shows that Oxy students are satisfied with their experiences… just over 90 percent said that they would choose Oxy again if they could do their college choice process over again. All institutions have room to grow, and the data reveals some of the areas in which Oxy has the greatest room for improvement. Nevertheless, on the whole, Oxy students find themselves happy, healthy, prepared, fulfilled and satisfied” Buschbach said.

Spinosa expressed hope that as IRAP continues to grow on campus, students will find the department accessible to any survey needs they might have. All IRAP data is available to the campus community, and they offer services in crafting surveys for research projects.

“We basically serve as a consultant for data work across campus. We want to ensure we make data-driven decisions and not decisions based on anything else,” Spinosa said.

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