Using FSSE Data
Download a PDF of the Using FSSE Data resource.
Institutions use FSSE to provide insight into NSSE results and to gain a better understanding of student engagement on their campuses. This page offers topics and tips that will help you make use of your FSSE results. See the analysis resources for syntax and tips for working with the data. The Data User's Guide provides resources for sharing results with others.
Many FSSE institutions share their results in practical and distinctive ways, including the following:
- Accreditation self-studies
- Assessment and improvement
- Curricular reform
- Faculty development programs
- Faculty workshops and retreats
- Grant proposals, applications, and progress reports
- Institutional research
- Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
Whether you seek to include faculty and other colleagues in campus discussions or to learn how FSSE results have been used at different institutions, you will find helpful hints on these pages.
Faculty colleagues, institutional researchers, centers for teaching and learning, deans, and department chairs may all be interested in your FSSE results and willing to help make meaningful use of them on your campus.
Institutions receive a file of their raw FSSE data and customized FSSE reports. Browsing through these reports will give you a good sense of the information provided. If you have trouble deciding where to focus, consider using exercises in the FSSE Data User’s Guide.
Administering Topical Module or consortium questions gives institutions additional opportunities to gain insight into aspects of their campuses, and reports for these question sets are included with your Institutional Report.
Knowing your target audience can serve as a filter for your results and guide your decisions about which information to include. For example, a meeting with faculty who teach first-year courses might be the perfect occasion for sharing first-year NSSE results and lower-division FSSE results.
Highlight how your faculty compare to FSSE’s total survey population by using our Interactive Data Visualizations. These and other tools and resources are outlined later in this document.
Institutions share results in a number of ways, ranging from posting online to discussions at faculty meetings. How institutions share their FSSE results—the internal and external audiences they target, the channels of communication they use, the results they present—should be guided by the institutions’ assessment needs and purpose for administering the survey.