Developing a survey of taught postgraduate students

The Office for Students is developing options for a feedback survey for taught postgraduate students.

A key source of information about the undergraduate experience is provided by the National Student Survey (NSS).

However, there is a lack of comparable published information about the postgraduate taught student experience.

We are exploring options for a postgraduate taught survey that can:

• provide information that contributes to the public accountability of higher education
• provide information to help us fulfil our regulatory duties under the Higher Education and Research Act 2017
• provide data that supports higher education providers in improving the student experience.

Test questionnaire

In 2019 we tested a new PGT questionnaire, asking students about their postgraduate academic experience, their perceptions of value for money, and the provision of mental health and wellbeing support at their provider.

We learnt valuable lessons from this research about how the survey operated and how best to manage obtaining a robust sample from this cohort.

Our next steps will be to understand how we can refine the survey questionnaire to make it more relevant to all students especially those on distance learning and part-time courses.

As part of this we will be running some workshops with provider and student representatives, in parallel with the NSS review, to further explore the question themes.