National Student Survey 2026 data: student characteristics data

The data is provided at both UK and national country-level splits. There are some instances where data is available for providers in some UK nations but not all. This is due to either:

1. The coverage of the specific student characteristics. Requirements sometimes differ between countries in what data is collected, and sometimes we link to other data sources which are not applicable for students across the whole UK.
   
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2. The coverage of the questions. Question 27 is only asked to students registered at English providers and question 28 only to those at Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish providers.

In addition, no data is shown at UK level for characteristics which are not collected across the whole UK and questions which are not asked in all UK nations.

The data dashboard allows you to select NSS results, using the filters at the top of the dashboard. You can use the filters to choose which characteristic to look at and to focus on a particular population. For example, when viewing the NSS results by disability type, you can use the filters to focus on those students who are studying full-time, or who are studying a particular subject.

For further guidance on using the dashboard, select the ‘Show help’ button in the top right-hand corner.

The dashboard contains multiple filters and it will take a moment to reload when each filter is changed. This loading time can vary based on internet speed and the processing power of the device used. We are aware that the dashboard can be particularly slow when new NSS publications are released, due to the high number of users, and we are actively looking for solutions to this. 

All the data available on the dashboards can be accessed using our data downloads, which we provide in CSV and Excel format. 

Download the NSS data. 

As part of ongoing improvements to the dashboard, we have removed the shaded bars that previously illustrated statistical uncertainty. This is because Power BI (the platform we are now using for data visualisations) currently does not allow us to show shaded bars in the same way as Tableau (our previous data visualisation platform).

We will continue to review and develop the dashboard and will monitor user feedback to understand whether additional features – such as the shaded bars – should be reintroduced in future.

In the NSS data dashboard, we show the positivity measure, its difference from benchmark, and the confidence we can have in these comparisons.

Confidence measures help determine whether a difference from the benchmark is likely to reflect a genuine difference in student views rather than random variation, particularly where response numbers are small.

The Materially below benchmark measure indicates the confidence that the positivity measure is at least 2.5 percentage points lower than the benchmark. Higher values indicate greater confidence that students are genuinely less positive than similar students across the sector.

Similarly, the Materially above benchmark measure indicates the confidence that the positivity measure is at least 2.5 percentage points higher than the benchmark. Higher values indicate greater confidence that students are genuinely more positive than comparable students across the sector.

The Broadly in line with the benchmark measure indicates confidence that the positivity measure is within 2.5 percentage points of the benchmark in either direction.

These confidence measures provide additional context to the positivity scores and benchmark comparisons, helping users understand how strongly the data supports any apparent differences from sector expectations.

Question 28 ('Overall, I am satisfied with the quality the course') has a different format from the other survey questions and five rather than four response options. Because of this, the positivity measure for question 28 cannot be straightforwardly concerned with the positivity measure for the other questions. In particular, we would typically expect the positivity measure for question 28 to be lower than the positivity measure for the other questions, because we allow respondents to take a neutral stance ('Neither agree nor disagree'). 

Question 28 is only asked of students studying in providers in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Therefore, results for question 28 are not provided for England, or for the whole UK.

Through changing the filters on the data dashboard, you may arrive at a selection for which no data is available. This would happen, for instance, if you selected the filters ‘Apprenticeship’ and ‘Undergraduate with postgraduate components’ for a subject area with no apprenticeships at that level. This will also occur if you select a student characteristic or question where the data is not available for a particular country or at UK level. When this happens, you will be presented with the message ‘Data unavailable’. You can choose a different combination of filters or refresh your browser. To find out more details on the unavailable data please click on the 'Data unavailable?' button on the data dashboard.

Rarely, we are unable to calculate benchmarks for student characteristic data.  In some cases, one or more of the benchmarking factors are unknown for most students in a student group. In these cases, the results are shown with a suppression indicator of ‘BK’. Benchmarks are also unavailable in some cases when the student group makes an extremely large contribution to its own benchmark. Again, these results are shown as ‘N/A’.  Similarly, we do not provide benchmarks when results are suppressed.

If you receive an error message beginning with '{"result":' when trying to view a dashboard on our website, try closing and restarting your internet browser. This issue can occur if you have viewed a dashboard on the OfS portal since opening your current browser session. 

It is not possible to view our dashboards on the portal and on our website concurrently in the same browser. To switch between them you will need to restart your browser, delete your browser cookies, or use two different browsers.