College Senior Survey (CSS)
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See the online College Senior Survey in action
To download the CIRP Survey Portfolio that contains the administrative guidelines, copies of the survey instruments, summaries of the national results, and other useful documents - CLICK HERE.
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CIRP College Senior Survey: Program Overview
Developed by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), the College Senior Survey (CSS) is administered through the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), which has conducted national surveys of college students and faculty since 1966. Although the CSS can be used as a stand-alone instrument, when used in conjunction with the CIRP Freshman Survey or the Your First College Year (YFCY) Survey, the CSS generates valuable longitudinal data on students’ cognitive and affective growth during college. The CSS is used by researchers and practitioners to study the impact of service-learning, leadership development, and student-faculty interactions, as well as to assess a wide variety of instructional practices.
CIRP College Senior Survey: The Survey Instrument
Administered to seniors as an "exit" survey, the CSS focuses on a broad range of college outcomes and post-college goals and plans including:
The CSS follows up many items on the CIRP Freshman Survey and the YFCY Survey. The CSS also includes space for up to 20 institution-specific questions.
- academic achievement and engagement
- cognitive and affective development
- student values, attitudes, and goals
- satisfaction with the college experience
- degree aspirations and career plans
- post-college plans
The 2009-2010 College Senior Survey instrument is now available for download. Click
here for the official copy.
The 2009-2010 College Senior Survey instrument Changes. Click
here for the official copy.
Note: A list of majors and careers to be used with the survey can be found
here. These
lists will be contained on a removeable flap attached to the paper survey instrument.
Administration Options
The CSS is conducted from November–June to facilitate surveying both December
and June graduates, and is offered as both a paper and a web survey. Our new web
portal (www.cirpsurveys.org) provides greater flexibility and ease of use when
managing your survey administration.
The Paper Survey—can be admin istered in the classroom, a group setting, or as a
mail-out survey. The most successful administration of the CSS is in large group
settings, such as a graduation rehearsal. You select the delivery date and the
number of questionnaires needed. Your paper survey data is available in just
3 weeks after your paper questionnaires arrive for scanning.
The Web Survey—can be administered either with your campus managing the
email notification process, or for ease of use, you can elect to have HERI manage
the email notifications to students. A web survey can be more convenient for both
you and your students. Our new web portal allows you maximum flexibility in
setting email notification and reminder dates, customized “welcome” and “thank
you” pages, customized email notifications, and input of additional questions.
Throughout the administration, you can obtain updates on your response rate. Your
survey data is available the day after a student completes the questionnaire.
The Paper & Web Survey Combination—enables your institution to enhance your
response rate by using both methodologies for maximum exposure. Students may
complete either version.
CIRP College Senior Survey: Reports & Special Services
STANDARD DELIVERABLES
Your paper survey data will be available 3 weeks after your completed questionnaires are returned
for processing. Web survey data is available on an ongoing basis, processed overnight for next-day use.
You can download the data directly from the CIRP Web Portal, or use our optional online
data analysis package. The online data analysis package allows you to run frequencies,
means, crosstabs, and correlations by just pointing and clicking!
HERI's traditional CSS reports and longitudinal data files are distributed in
late summer. Institutions will receive:
CSS Campus Profile
The results for all students are presented broken out by gender. Also, institutions will receive comparative data for schools of similar type.
CSS Follow-up Report
Students' CSS responses are compared to their earlier responses on the CIRP Freshman Survey (and YFCY, if applicable).
SPECIAL DATA SERVICES
Data Merges
HERI can merge CSS data with other institutional data (e.g., registrar’s data or student health data).
Peer Group Reports
Compare your institution’s data to those of five or more institutions.
Special “Group Code” Reports
Compare up to 190 subsets of students.
CIRP College Senior Survey: Fees / Withdrawl Policy
FEES
The institutional participation fee covers all the costs for the data collection, data processing, as well as preparation of campus reports; and includes all shipping costs (unless expedited shipping is necessary, in which
case it is billed to your institution), your institutional profile in Excel spreadsheet format, as well as the raw survey data file in SPSS format. Additional services are available at an additional cost.
The following
table is the breakdown of the fees associated with the CSS:
STANDARD COSTS Participation Fee $775 Processing Fee
$3 per survey processed
OPTIONAL COSTS Customized Welcome and Thank You Pages
FREE
Integrated additional questions
$325
Email distribution to students
$350
On-line Data Analysis
$125
† Participants in the 2009 Freshman Survey that register for both the 2010 Your First College Year Survey (YFCY) AND the 2009-2010 College Senior Survey (CSS) will receive $100 off the Participation Fee for both the YFCY and the CSS! You will not be billed for the reduced participation fee until you complete registration for both the YFCY and CSS. This opportunity is available during the registration process
Your campus will only be charged for the surveys/log-in codes that are processed by our survey vendor. Unused surveys/log-in codes will not be billed
Billing Policy
Upon registration, institutions are sent one bill for the participation fee. After each
institution completes their survey administration and returns the data for processing, the per-survey
processing fees are calculated and a second bill is sent to each institution for their respective
processing charges. Institutions are also billed separately for any Data Service Orders they may place,
and these bills are sent out after the completion and fulfillment of each Data Service Order.
Withdrawl Policy
You may cancel without penalty up to the time that the questionnaires you
have ordered have been mailed to you. If the questionniares have already
been mailed and you return (at your expense) the entire shipment unmarked,
you will not be charged the full participation fee, but will be charged a
withdrawl fee of $100. If you wish to cancel but cannot return the entire
shipment unmarked, you will be charged the full participation fee.
Withdrawl Policy for Schools Doing Web Administration
You may cancel without penalty up to the time that the unique web log-in codes have been sent
to your institution, or distributed per your institution's direction.
If the web log-in codes have already been sent to your institution or distributed via HERI's
email distribution service to your intended survey participants, you will be charged a withdrawl
fee of $100. In addition, if HERI has provided any customized services at your request (e.g.,
incorporated on-line additional questions, etc), you will also be responsible for the full cost
of these services.
CIRP College Senior Survey: Administration Schedule
| 1 | Mid-September | Invitations to Participate in the College Senior Survey are available. Institutions that wish to participate can register and begin placing orders for survey instruments/web log-in codes. |
| 2 | Early November | Survey instruments are available and ready for delivery. The web version of the CSS is activated. |
| 3 | December 31st | Schools that want to receive early reports or data files must submit their first batch of surveys to HERI's central processing center by this date. |
| 4 | Mid-February | Schools submitting their surveys to the processing center by December 31st receive their early data files and special reports. |
| 5 | June 30th | The CSS administration cycle closes. All schools must return their completed survey forms to the HERI processing center. The online (web-version) closes. |
| 6 | Late August | CSS Institutional Profiles are produced and mailed. |
| 7 | Mid-September | HERI begins to process requests for special data services. |
Administering the College Senior Survey
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Web Features in Detail
If your institution decides on a web-only or a paper and web CSS survey administration, we offer the following web-based options for further customizing the online version of the CSS.
| FOR SCHOOLS USING WEB SURVEYS (Web Only or Paper/Web administration) - prices pending | ||
| Feature | Schools using... | Cost |
| Web Feature 1: A customized Welcome/Thank you page from your institution | ...web surveys | |
| After a student logs into the online version of the CSS survey, they
are directed to a customized Welcome page that includes text and a graphic (e.g., logo)
supplied by your institution. No other graphic capability will be available aside from
your institution's logo. HERI will provide a default version of this welcome page if none
is supplied by your institution.
Similarly, your institution will be able to supply custom text for the exit or Thank You page of the survey once the student submits their responses. This exit page can be used to remind the student about any incentive offer available to them (e.g., campus store rebate, raffle qualification, discount coupon, etc.). Also a direct link to another website (e.g., institution web page) or other student instructions can be placed within this page. Example of Custom Welcome / Thank You Screens
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| Web Feature 2: Integrated Additional Questions (limit: 20 items, 5-point scale) | ...web surveys | |
| The web-integrated additional questions allow your institution to provide
text for campus-specific questions onto the online version of the CSS survey. Institutions
that wish to utilize the 20 supplemental questions without this web option must do so by
distributing an extra handout to its entire target sample on their own.
The 20 local questions will have up to a five-point scale each, and they will be limited
to a single response per question (i.e., no multiple response questions are possible). |
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| Web Feature 3: Web-based Email Distribution System | ...web surveys | |
| The web-based email distribution system allows your institution to
manage the survey administration through the web. Institutions will control the survey
launch date, send out targeted email invitations, and send out reminder emails to non-respondents.
Institutions will first upload a file (e.g., MS Excel, tab-separated, comma-separated) that
includes a list of student names and email addresses to be included in the survey administration.
These names and emails will then be placed in the web-based email distribution system. Generic text
will be supplied by HERI for use in the email invitation and reminder emails generated by the email
distribution system, although this text can be modified by institutions as necessary. |
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| FOR ALL SCHOOLS (Paper Only, Web Only, or Paper/Web administration) | ||
| Web Feature 4: Real-time Data Analysis (ALL schools, regardless of administration method) | ...paper or web | |
| This year, institutions will have the ability to perform “real-time” data
analysis on variables within the survey. This will include frequency distributions, crosstabulations,
and means, as appropriate. Institutions using a paper only, paper & web, and web only administration
will have the ability to utilize this service to conduct simple descriptive analyses in “real-time”,
as both paper and web surveys will be added into the scanned file as the data is received. |
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Important Forms and Documentation
Click Icon to Download |
Form/Document Title | ||
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Package of: Checklist, Administration Guidelines, Survey Information Sheet, and Shipping Form | ||
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Administration Guidelines | ||
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Information About Using Student Identifiers | ||
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Changes To The Current Year Survey Instrument | ||
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Survey Information Sheet | ||
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UCLA IRB Approval Notice | ||
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Information About Payment Using Purchase Orders | ||
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Information on using HERI's Email Distribution Service To avoid legit emails from HERI with survey log in codes being filtered out as bulk or junk mail. |
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Survey Shipping Form | ||
Sample Letters
The following are sample letters that an institution may send out to their students.
| Form/Document Title | Wave 1 |
Wave 2 |
| Paper Only Administration | |
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| Web Only Administration | |
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| Paper / Web Administration | |
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CIRP College Senior Survey for Insititutional Researchers
How Colleges Use the CSS
- To evaluate student satisfaction
Students rate their overall satisfaction with over 25 different aspects of their college experience. - To collect information on student involvement
The CSS collects information on the academic and extracurricular experiences of college students. - To assess students' academic achievement
The survey includes several different measures of academic achievement and several items related to academic engagement and disengagement. - To measure retention
The CSS provides information on whether students take a leave of absence, withdraw or transfer, as well as their plans for the following year. - To understand students' values, attitudes, and goals
The CSS assesses the importance students place on a rich array of personal goals and values. - To assess post-college plans and aspirations
The redesigned CSS collects more extensive information on students' plans after college graduation. - To study specific campus issues
Each participating campus may include up to 20 locally designed questions to collect information on topics important to individual campuses.
Using the Freshman Survey with the CSS
When college staff use both the CIRP and the CSS surveys, they accumulate valuable data on their students. These data can be used for a multitude of purposes, including conducting accreditation self-studies; satisfying state-mandated performance measures; evaluating college programs and services; and monitoring the impact of your institution on your students. Here are some examples of how institutions throughout the country use these two surveys together, surveying students when they first arrive on campus and anywhere from one to ten years later.
- A college in the Midwest compares CIRP to CSS data on students’ self-reported skill development during college. Staff members use this data for re-accreditation purposes.
- An institution in the East uses the CIRP and the CSS to develop student profiles that are shared with new faculty during their orientation. New faculty really appreciate getting a sense of both students overall and of how students’ expectations and experiences change during college.
- A college in the South evaluates the success of its leadership development program by examining CSS data to determine whether the attitudes and behaviors regarding leadership have changed for students who have gone through the program. They base this change by looking at responses to the ESS for these students.
- An institution in the Midwest describes the combination of the CIRP and the CSS as "extremely powerful". They use these surveys to determine differences among student experiences based on such qualifiers as major and race. They are able to determine how the institution impacts these students, after controlling for the students’ backgrounds.
- At an institution in the West, staff compared students in a freshman-cluster curriculum to other freshmen. They found interesting differences in students’ self-reported academic abilities that they can report back to the faculty teaching in the clusters.
- An engineering college in the West links CSS data with CIRP data and is especially interested in the experience of women at their institution.
- An institution in the East has found that students’ values do not change much during college, but that their actual experiences in college are often quite different from their pre-college expectations. Staff members use these data in enrollment management and strategic planning.
- A college in the South evaluates the success of its service learning program by examining changes in students’ volunteer attitudes and behaviors from students’ freshman year (using CIRP) to their senior year (using CSS).
- An engineering college in the West found that their entering students had low social self-confidence and that they still had low social self-confidence in their senior year. As a result, staff members have instituted a freshman seminar that will include topics on conflict resolution, prejudices, and mental health issues. Administrators and faculty will continue to use the CIRP and the CSS to track their students’ progress with this intervention.
The following are Frequently Asked Questions that HERI gets regarding the CIRP College Senior Survey. Click on each header for more information about each individual study; click again on the expanded header to close the section. Click here to submit a question that has not yet been addressed.
Administration: Can HERI distribute the survey log-in codes for us?
Yes, for an additional fee. Please check the respective survey overview pages for the exact fee amount.
Related Links: TFS Overview, YFCY Overview, CSS Overview, Faculty Survey Overview
Administration: Can we directly integrate our local questions into the survey?
Only web administered surveys have this option, and it is at an additional cost. Otherwise you must distribute the questions to the students separately with instructions on how to fill in the answers on the survey form. Please check the respective survey overview pages for the exact fee amount.
Related Links: TFS Overview, YFCY Overview, CSS Overview, Faculty Survey Overview
Administration: Do students have to put an ID#?
No, your institution will instruct the students what to enter (if anything). Please note, however, that if nothing is entered in the ID# field, it will be next to impossible to link respondants in any of the follow-up CIRP surveys.
Administration: How do I complete the Research Approval Form?
As of September 2007, all Research Approval and Certification of Research Use forms are to be completed online via the CIRP Online Portal.
Administration: Must the Research Approval Form be completed by an Institutional Review Board member?
This varies from campus to campus. HERI does not require an IRB member to complete the RAF; any appropriate campus representative may complete the form. However, your institution may have rules about who can complete such forms - so please check with your local IRB.
Administration: Should I return unused paper survey forms?
It depends. If your institution is canceling participation in the survey, then please return all forms in the original box to the vendor where they came from to avoid being charged the full participation fee. Otherwise, we do not want unused forms. Do not attempt to reuse forms next year as the survey changes each year. Please dispose of unused forms responsibly.
Administration: What does “Student ID# (as instructed)” mean? What should I tell our students to enter?
Traditionally we used Social Security Number as the student ID, though schools had the option of instructing students to enter their local school ID#. As preference for using student ID's grew, HERI changed the language on the survey forms, but the same rules still apply
- You can instruct the students to enter anything you want (SSN, ID#, birthday)
- Make sure to instruct students to use the same type of ID in follow up surveys to facilitate linking longitudinal data
Administration: What is the administration timeline?
Please refer to the calendar in our forum and the Administrative Guidelines for specific dates. In general, there are 9 steps:
- Register your institution for the survey, ordering surveys/log-on IDs to arrive a week before you plan on administering.
- Set up a PO to pay for the participation fee. You may also include projected processing fees on this PO.
- Complete the online Research Approval Form (RAF) stating whether or not IRB approval was required on your campus.
- Administer the surveys.
- Return surveys to our vendor (you can use the boxes they came in) remembering to include the Transmittal Form in the boxes.
- Fill in the online Administration Report Form (ARF).
- Order any additional data services you may desire.
- Set up a PO to pay for processing fees and/or additional data services.
- Receive survey results from HERI.
Billing: What is included in the participation fee?
Your participation fee includes:
- participation in the current year survey
- any costs involved in mailing surveys to your institution (unless expedited shipping is necessary, in which case it is billed to your institution),
- your Institutional Profile (Report on Excel Spreadsheet), and
- the Data File (in SPSS and raw formats).
Freshmen Survey participants also receive a copy of The American Freshmen: National Norms publication; and Faculty Survey participants also receive a copy of The American College Teacher: National Norms.
Billing: When will I be billed?
There are two invoices you will receive; one when you first sign up for the participation fee and one at the end of administration for the processing fees. Please check the individual survey overview pages for more info on pricing structure. Any additional Data Services that your institution has ordered will be billed for separately when services are rendered. (See Data Services Order Forms for more detailed information about Additional Data Services).
Data Services: Can I get a report or datafile for all years that my institution has participated?
Yes, HERI does offer trends reports and datafiles for The Freshmen Survey only. To place a trends order for you institution, please use the order form linked here.
Data Services: How do I gain access to HERI data?
Please follow the directions given in the Researcher’s Tools section.
Data Services: I can’t find the Data Services Order form, how do I order additional services?
On all surveys from 2007 on, data services will be ordered via the web portal. For orders on older surveys please use the archived DSOs available under Data Services Order Forms.
Data Services: When will we get our results (aka institutional profile)?
Generally speaking, institutions should expect to receive their results (aka institutional profile) from each survey within approximately 6 weeks from the close of survey. The official survey close date is posted in the administrative guidelines for each respective survey, as well as online in the HERI forum.
Registration: How many surveys should I order?
More than you need. We do not charge based on how many forms you order, but on how many completed surveys you return.
Registration: I usually get an invitation in the mail with a registration to mail in, what happened this year?
While we do still mail out "invitations," one is not needed in order to sign up for any HERI surveys. All survey registrations are now done exclusively on-line through the web via the CIRP web portal.
Registration: Is there a deadline for registering?
There is not an actual deadline for registering. However, all institution must complete survey administration by the official survey close date (this may be found in the Administrative Guidelines for each respective survey). You can register up until a week before the survey administration closes, as long as you complete survey administration by the official survey administration close date. To avoid expedited shipping being billed to your institution, please order your surveys at least 10 business days before they are needed.
Registration: When will the registration page be up?
Registration pages for each survey usually go up about a month or two before the survey administration period officially starts.
- The CIRP Freshman survey is usually administered annually during Summer or the start of Fall, as it is given to freshmen who are just beginning at their institution. So look to be able to register in December.
- The Your First College Year (YFCY) and College Senior Survey (CSS) are usually administered annually at the end of the school year, so registration for these two surveys typically go live around some time during the Fall.
- The HERI Faculty Survey is administered tri-annually during the Fall, so expect to be able to register in the late Summer.