Administration

Institutions can administer the RISC at two timepoints during the academic year: late fall (October and November) and late spring (March and April). The registration form is located at the bottom of this page.

Administering on your campus

We offer four modes of data collection:

1. Web survey

Colleges provide us with a list of student names and email addresses, and we send each student an initial email invitation and four reminder emails with unique hyperlinks to the survey. The survey typically takes around 7 minutes to complete.
Total survey administration time for this approach is two weeks.

2. In-class administration using personal devices (no online courses)

We recommend this approach for smaller institutions, or institutions that traditionally have low survey response rates.
Colleges provide us with a list of course sections and names and email addresses of students enrolled in each section. We create a file consisting of a personalized one-page flier for each student, sorted by course section, with faculty instructions for each section. We securely transmit this file to colleges; colleges then print off the login sheets and distribute to faculty.
Faculty (or administrative staff) distribute the fliers to students in their course section. Each flier has a unique code that allows students to take the survey in class using a cell phone, tablet or laptop. Including time necessary to give fliers to students, total time for in-class administration should take no more than 20 minutes. Unlike other in-class surveys, there are no materials to collect afterwards, because students take the survey online.
We then send up to three emails to nonrespondents. This ensures that students who did not attend class on the day the fliers were distributed have the ability to answer the survey.
Total survey administration time for this approach is three weeks: two weeks to allow for in-class administration, followed by one week of web survey administration.

3. In-class administration including online courses

Colleges choose this approach if they want to use the in-class option, but also want to include students in online courses. Students in the in-class courses receive login sheets from their instructors, and students in online classes are contacted by us via email.
Total survey administration time for this approach is three weeks.

4. Open URL

Some colleges prefer to post a common hyperlink to the survey on college websites and social media, without directly emailing students unique hyperlinks. We provide this option, but for a variety of reasons we do not recommend it. Please contact us for more information.

Which option should we choose?

We recommend a minimum of 300 survey responses. Given that some colleges tend to have low response rates for web surveys, we also recommend surveying the entire student body when possible, especially for smaller institutions. Alternatively, consider using in-class administration.
For example, if the total number of students at your college is 1,500 and your typical web survey response rate is 10%, your expected number of respondents is 150. Here, we would strongly recommend in-class administration. But if the typical response rate is 30%, your expected number of respondents is 450, so web survey administration would be fine. Please contact us if you would like to discuss which would be your best option.

Schedule

The RISC Survey team works closely with you on every aspect of preparing and administering the survey, including invitations, reminder messages, and delivery of the online survey. The timeline below outlines the process:
Register for survey and plan
  • Sign service agreement.
  • Begin planning promotional materials (e.g., pre-notification, social media, flyers, incentives).
Beginning of semester: Survey preparations
  • Customize your survey:
  • Provide RISC team the five office names you want included on the survey.
  • Develop up to 10 college-specific questions (additional $500 charge).
  • Provide student population data file to RISC Survey staff
  • Finalize promotional strategy.
  • Draft pre-notification email from college president.
  • Work with college IT professionals to have our domain name whitelisted.
Middle/end of semester: Notification and data collection
  • College sends survey pre-notification email from your college president.
  • Survey administration opens.
  • RISC staff send invitation to students and subsequent reminder messages to nonrespondents.
Data & Reports
  • RISC staff deliver custom college reports and raw survey data file.
  • Reports are delivered in January for fall administration and June for spring administration.

Pricing

Because survey costs do not increase with the number of respondents, we charge a flat fee of $3,000 per school, regardless of size. This includes administration of the survey, generation of and electronic copies of all reports, and a copy of the survey dataset.

Colleges can add up to 10 additional questions for an additional $500.

Payment is due as follows:

  • A non-refundable down payment of $500 and the signed contract is due 6 weeks prior to survey administration date.
  • Student emails, customized office names and optional college questions are due 4 weeks prior to survey administration date (this date is chosen by the college).
  • Remaining balance is due when final report and materials are delivered.
  • Withdrawal: If a college decides to withdraw prior to survey administration, we will charge an additional $500 cancellation fee if we have already processed and loaded your data into our system.

Deliverables

Colleges receive an institutional report (see sample 2-year and 4-year reports) describing their survey results, as well as benchmarking data from other participating colleges.
Survey responses are provided in SAS, SPSS, and Stata formats.

Registration Form

Please submit the information below, and a representative will contact you shortly.


Administration

Please check one of the following methods you would like to use for your institution:


Custom Question

© Percontor 2024