Do non-respondents differ from respondents?
To determine whether respondents and non-respondents differed in their engagement in selected effective educational practices the Indiana University Center for Survey Research conducted telephone interviews with 553 non-respondents from 21 different colleges and universities. Overall, it appears that undergraduate students who do not complete the NSSE survey when invited to do so may actually be slightly more engaged than respondents. This is counter to what many observers believe, that non-respondents have a less educationally productive experience and, as a result, do not respond to surveys. The findings suggest that the opposite may be true, that non-respondents are busier in many dimensions of their lives and don’t take time to complete surveys.
