How our surveys work

Our insight surveys are successful because they are designed around an engagement process. They enable you to collect and analyse data from students and staff on their expectations and experiences of the digital environment.

All of our surveys are delivered and managed in Jisc online surveys, an online survey service specially developed for the UK education sector. The survey instruments are based around concise question sets that have been developed in consultation with the sector for relevance, readability and ease of response. Many of the questions map across the different surveys. This reflects the fact that students, teachers and professional service staff are all users of the same digital environment and all play a role in the students' digital experience.

Our surveys run on an annual cycle starting in October each year - see key dates for our surveys.

You are free to choose the time that suits your organisation best. Typically institutions allow a three week period for participants to respond. Surveys can be run once during the timeframe that the Jisc surveys are open. They can also be run more than once as pulse surveys - see our guidance pages for further information.

We offer different versions of the surveys, each with the option to ask a few local questions of your own at the end.

Our surveys for students and teaching staff include versions for:

• Further education
• Higher education

There is one survey question set for:

• Professional services staff

These are all relatively short surveys that should take approximately 15 minutes to complete. They include closed questions as well as free text questions to gather qualitative data. All questions are optional so that participants can leave some questions blank it they do not wish to answer. Answers are not recorded until participants click on the final 'submit' button.