External Surveys 

A variety of external entities request information from colleges and universities for rankings and search engines.  The reporting cycle lasts throughout the academic year.  The Common Data Set serves as the basis for many of the surveys.

Internal Surveys

Internal surveys are an important assessment tool that provide insights into many topics.  

Well designed and administered surveys of faculty, staff, and students can yield useful perspectives on important issues.  However, too much surveying raises concerns related to redundancy, low response rates and survey design quality. 

  1. Avoid over surveying by reviewing what is already available and by employing appropriate sampling methodology. 
  2. Increase response rates by working around other large-scale surveys already scheduled. 
  3. Limited assistance with survey design is available through the the Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Effectiveness.  More comprehensive support is available through Institute for Research in the Social Sciences 

Colorado State University has licensed Qualtrics as our enterprise survey tool.  All current students, faculty and staff should have access.  For issues with licensing or access, please contact Mark Paquette.  For issues with the tool itself, please contact their help desk.

Qualtrics Handbook of Question Design is a short introduction to designing a quality survey to increase response rates and help ensure valid data.