Using the a La Carte Survey

There are 2 ways you can deploy the survey:

Collective Administration: Participate in the survey administration being conducted as a pre survey in the first week of your program and a post survey in the last week of your program by joining the collective administration. This is the most efficient way to participate. PIs will receive an email invitation April (with follow up in May) soliciting the survey each year, and inquiring about modules of interest to the site.

Benefits: ease of administration, participate in collective data analysis to the NSF for comparable student outcomes measures, obtain your site data for your own use,and the ability to choose which modules your students receive in the survey.

Steps to participate in Collective Administration of the Survey:

• Respond to the direct email invitation (from Audrey Rorrer) in April through May, providing the start date and end date of your REU site; OR contact audrey.rorrer@uncc.edu directly.

• You will receive an email with the invitation that you will then forward to your students during the first week of your program;

• You will receive your site response data by email as soon as possible, by June 1 for those sites who start before June. This data will not include student names.* For the post survey, your students will receive a direct email from the survey collector; you will be notified that it has been sent so you can prompt your students to respond.

• You will receive student response data packaged for your site. It will include the actual responses, the coded responses, the construct means, and instructions for analysis.

*We strongly recommend the use of de-identified (i.e. no names) data sets for PIs for several compelling reasons. Student privacy is important not only to protect the students’ privacy, but also to ensure that they feel free to respond openly to questions, therefore reducing social response bias and increasing response rate. The intent of the survey is to measure student attitudes and beliefs, not to serve as a research project matching tool. Why is UNC Charlotte collecting student names? We will collect the student names and emails so that we can personalize the post survey collection; we may also send a voluntary follow up survey to the participants (this information is presented to them in survey consent).

Independent Implementation: Customize the survey for your own use by using the entire survey with your own additional items, or using scale components of the a la Carte Survey. This feature allows you to customize the survey that you implement independently. Benefits: administer the survey directly and add scales and items to fit your site specific needs. Disadvantage: time to administer, limited results due to small sample size.

Steps to participate in Independent Implementation:

• Submit required IRB applications at your institution so that you may alert them to the research and your plans to survey your students;

• Determine how you will administer the survey (online or via paper);

• Copy the full survey, or survey component scales, into your chosen survey delivery mechanism (please note that you will have to replicate the survey in your own tool); Be sure to use modules of the survey that align with your site assessment goals, i.e. the sub scales such as self-efficacy, rather than just a few items, to maintain integrity of the scale;

• Administer to your students during the first week of the program and again in the last week of the program.