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Survey Guidelines

NACADA sanctions all surveys of association members prior to survey development and distribution. 

Most member surveys begin the sanctioning process with the approval of a NACADA organizational unit (Commission, Interest Group or Region see CIG survey guidelines). Representatives of NACADA's organizational units must receive clearance from Charlie Nutt, NACADA Executive Director, prior to developing the member survey. Submit a 50-100 word statement of purpose along with survey topics, sample questions, whether human subject IRB review will be needed, and anticipated survey dates, to Charlie Nutt to begin the survey development approval process.

After development clearance has been granted, survey authors should contact Marsha Miller, NACADA Assistant Director, Resources & Services, to discuss survey design.  This should be at least 6 months prior to the desired survey start date. Sanctioned surveys use the on-line survey capabilities provided by the Kansas State University's Axio Survey System.

Designing the Survey: Survey authors should keep the following survey structural components in mind when designing their survey:

Required:

  1. Survey title
  2. Short description of the purpose and proposed use of the survey.
  3. Opening instructions for the person taking the survey including deadline date.
  4. Optional separate instructions for each survey page.
  5. Closing statement.

Introductory and reminder e-mails need to be provided by the survey author.

The author must specify what membership groups will be surveyed. Groups must correspond to either the existing association divisions or factors within the NACADA member database. Surveys demographics questions must conform to the existing NACADA demographic guidelines. Examples include: commissions/interest groups, regions, roles, and institution types. Design surveys with no more than 30 questions. 

Four question types are available. While question types can be mixed throughout the survey, the software does NOT allow for two part questions.

  • Multiple choice. Respondent is asked to choose one or more responses from a list of alternatives. Each question allows for 2 - 15 responses. True/False and Yes/No questions can also be asked. When typing, do NOT use bullets to indicate responses for multiple choice questions. 
Response sets: Questions that force respondents to choose a single response give the most useable data. However respondents can be allowed to mark multiple responses. (Multiple response answers must be analyzed by hand using data taken from the Excel spreadsheet.) An "other" response can be programmed into these questions and a comment box is available. Comments will be printed in Excel and the survey author will have to hand tabulate comments.
  • Scale. This option presents a set of attitude statements and asks respondent to express agreement/disagreement or rating of a created scale. Scales can range from 1-10. Although the default scale is "strongly agree", "agree", "neutral", "disagree" and strongly disagree" each statement can be individually programmed with words groups up to 24 letters. Each scale can have its own directions. There can be up to 10 statement points on each scale but no sub-statements are allowed. Statements appearing in a row under one scale will be numbered as one question e.g. 10a, 10b, 10c (not 10, 11, 12) although results for each statement will be reported in different spreadsheet cells for ease of analysis.   
  • Ranking. Presents a statement with a set of items that asks the respondent to order the items with relation to the statement. There can be separate directions for each ranking question. Respondents can rank order up to 10 statements.
  • Short Answer. Short answer responses may consist of a phrase, sentence, or paragraph. Responses are printed in Excel. The survey author is responsible for tabulating comments.
Note: Do not use quotation marks, apostrophes or contractions.  The software does not recognize the " or '

Administering the Survey

Submit completed surveys for final clearance. Once a survey receives final approval it will be posted to a web site where authors can view it and suggest editing changes prior to the survey being "published" for member response. Note: once a survey has been administered to even one member it can not be changed.

Survey groups will be notified of the on-line survey site using the author submitted e-mail. Surveys are usually available for 10 days but authors may choose to make a survey available for a maximum of 3 weeks.

Survey results

At completion, survey results are downloaded into an Excel worksheet and the worksheet is provided to the survey author for tabulation and evaluation. Data from all NACADA sanctioned surveys are owned by NACADA. Survey authors are expected to submit a manuscript, based upon the survey results, for possible publication in the NACADA Journal (see NACADA Journal guidelines). Survey authors may request permission to use results of NACADA surveys in other venues, i.e., dissertation, presentations, publication, etc.

Survey resources:

NACADA Executive Office
Kansas State University
2323 Anderson Avenue, Suite 225
Manhattan, KS  66502-2912
Phone: (785) 532-5717   Fax: (785) 532-7732
e-mail: nacada@ksu.edu

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