2009–2010 Fee Proposal Student Feedback Survey Analysis

Solicitation of Proposals

On February 3, 2009 a call for Campus Quality Fee funding proposals was announced via e-mail to the Student Affairs Management Council, Associated Students President Miguel Segura, CSUN President's Cabinet, and the Provost Council. The recipients were asked to distribute the message widely. The message contained a web link to the Campus Quality Fee funding proposal guidelines and on-line submission form. Also announced was the submission deadline of February 18, 2009.

A total of 85 proposals were submitted. A list of the proposals is provided in Appendix A. Eight (8) proposals were identified as not meeting Campus Quality Fee criteria and eliminated from further consideration. They are designated an asterisk (*) in Appendix A.

Student Feedback

A survey was designed to solicit student feedback on the functional intent of the proposals. With minor exception specific proposals were not presented for student feedback in order to reduce the impression of “voting” for specific proposals. The proposals that were presented for direct student feedback could not easily be incorporated in broader categories for feedback.

The survey was administered through StudentVoice, a web-based assessment tool. An email inviting participation was sent to all enrolled students on March 9, 2009 (Appendix B). The email included a web link to the actual survey. A total of 2149 students responded, approximately a 6% response rate, providing a confidence level of 95% plus or minus 3%.

Tables 1-4 provide demographics comparisons of respondents with the population as of fall 2008.

Table 1. Class Standing by Percentage

Table 2. Race by Percentage

Table 3. Gender by Percentage

Table 4. College of Enrollment by Percentage

The demographic comparison reveals that the respondents accurately reflect the composition of the student body on the basis of gender; freshmen are underrepresented while juniors are overrepresented; international , Latino, and Pacific Islander students are underrepresented while Caucasian and multi-racial /other are overrepresented. The colleges of AMC, Education, Engineering and Computer Science, and Social & Behavioral Sciences are overrepresented while Business and Economics is underrepresented. [Note: a difference equal to or greater than 1.9% was use to categorize under- or over-representation.]

Appendix C presents the survey data by frequency and percentage. Table 5 presents the survey items in rank order of funding importance. The column labeled Definitely Fund-Most Important represents the percentage of respondents who selected that response option. Definitely Fund-Most Important was selected more frequently than any other response option for each of the items. The column labeled Definitely and Probably Fund represents the percentage of respondents who selected either Definitely Fund-Most Important or Probably Fund-Somewhat Important. Items in this column that do not have a corresponding entry into the Definitely Fund column indicates that the response item selected most frequently was other than Definitely Fund-Most Important

Table 5. Items Ranked by Funding Importance

Relationship of Proposals to Survey Items

The survey items were developed from the proposals. In an effort to avoid, as much as possible, a perception that respondents were “voting” on specific proposals only the intent or subject of the proposal was included. Proposals with common intent or subject were combined for the purpose of creating survey items. Table 6 displays the survey items in rank order of funding importance with the associated proposals.

Table 6. Items in Ranked Order by Funding Importance with Associated Proposals