Student Experience Survey
Do you have a few questions that you need answered to help with your department’s or unit’s strategic planning? The Student Experience Survey (SES) allows a few units from University of Waterloo to add their own questions to the SES that goes out to current Waterloo students every fall and winter term. This institutional survey is administered by the Statistical Consulting and Survey Research Unit (SCSRU), in collaboration with the Institutional Analysis and Planning (IAP) department, the Associate Vice President, Academic, and the Associate Provost, Students. Data from the survey informs programs administered by the faculties, the Associate Provost, Students office, Student Success Office, Library, and other academic support units.
The SES helps the University of Waterloo to understand students' perceptions of their academic and non-academic learning environment and experience at Waterloo.
Benefits to adding your own questions to the SES
- It’s free!
- Feedback on question structure and data analysis included (excluding open-ended questions)
- Data will be weighted to accurately represent the UWaterloo community at the time of the survey
- The SCSRU programs your questions into the main SES
Key details:
Study population: UWaterloo students
- A random sample of 10,000 undergraduates (fall and winter)
- All eligible graduate students (winter only, excludes all visiting students, ~6,000 students)
There is typically a 30-45% response rate for undergraduates and a 15-30% response rate for graduates.
Methodology: The Student Experience Survey (SES) is developed in Qualtrics for online distribution.
Please note:
- Students from small faculties are grouped into larger faculties that best match their program (i.e. Software Engineering from the VPA Faculty is grouped into the Engineering Faculty).
- Reports include breakdowns of: Faculty, academic load, visa status, year of study, and system of study.
- Undergraduate and graduate reports are prepared separately.
- This is an institutional level survey. Therefore, we cannot provide reliable results for programs or departments.
Only UWaterloo staff associated with academic units, satellite campuses, or university services at the University of Waterloo may submit questions to the SES. Students, clubs, student associations, and/or external researchers may not submit any questions. Data and reports from the SES are confidential and to be used for internal planning purposes only. The data cannot be published publicly or used for marketing/teaching/academic purposes.
If you have questions about if your unit or department is eligible to ask questions or how the data may be shared, please email iapscsru@uwaterloo.ca. If you are not eligible to participate in the SES but would still like to conduct a survey, please fill out the SCSRU checklist for a quote here.
There is a maximum of three questions. If one of your questions is a matrix question, there is a maximum of 5 sub-questions in that matrix. Additionally, we strongly recommend that no open-ended questions are submitted. If they are submitted, they will not be analysed, and you will receive a de-identified list of text responses.
If you have more than 3 questions or are not eligible under the SES requirements, we suggest you run a separate survey. Please submit a checklist to obtain a quote by filling out the form here.
The form for the SES is to indicate your interest and commitment to adding questions in a future iteration of the SES. You do not need to have a finalised set of questions at the time of completing submission form.
- The deadline to submit the interest form for inclusion in the Winter iteration is October 1. Finalized questions are then due to the SCSRU by November 1, as the survey is launched in February. Reports are ready in April.
- The deadline to submit the interest form for inclusion in the Fall iteration is April 1. Finalized questions are then due to the SCSRU by May 1. The survey is launched in the following October. Reports are ready in December.
Submissions after the above date will not be considered for the next iteration of the SES but will be considered for the iteration after (i.e., if you miss the Oct 1 deadline, you can still submit your interest and be considered for the next fall iteration.)
The SCSRU reserves the right to prioritise questions from various groups based on institutional strategic goals and reporting requirements within the University.
To help respond to your request effectively, please fill out this checklist to the best of your knowledge at this time.
As a reminder:
- You must be a staff or faculty member at the University of Waterloo to complete this form.
- Clubs, student associations, and WUSA staff cannot submit questions to the SES
- Your can only submit 3 questions
- The SES includes a random sample of 10,000 undergraduates, so questions targeting small groups are discouraged due to low numbers (i.e. program/department specific questions)
- This form is to indicate interest and commitment to participate in a future iteration of the SES, no question list/draft is required for submission.
- The data cannot be published publicly or used for marketing/teaching/academic purposes.
If you or your needs do not meet those criteria, please fill out the SCSRU services checklist for other survey options outside of the Student Experience Survey (SES) opportunity.
If some of the information is unknown, please leave the relevant section blank.