You have the ability to import your student demographic information into Baseline. By having your student demographic file within Baseline, you will be able to connect this data to your assessments, as well as generate student panels based off of event participation.
Below are some definitions of key terms of which to be aware:
User profiles are uploads that Anthology staff run to establish an internal connection or “profile” for survey respondents. The campus email address, ID, and first/last name can be loaded to establish this profile for individuals. The campus email address OR student ID (but not both) will need to be provided as an identifier. User profiles must be created in order for Panels to work. Anthology will typically create User Profiles based on demographic files.
Identifiers are campus email addresses or external IDs (typically student ID). Only one of these should be chosen for a user profile/demographic file. There is an exception for campuses with both Beacon and Baseline. If this describes your campus, please contact your Baseline Support Specialist or Consultant for guidance. Identifiers are uploaded by Anthology staff during the user profile process to link demographics to survey data. Identifiers are collected on surveys when a mass mailing or validation screen is used. If you plan to use the Mass Mailing system, please use campus email address as the identifier.
To get started:
You will need to provide an Excel file of student data to import into the site. This file must include the student ID and/or campus email address, but all of the other fields are up to you! Provide whatever demographic variables will be useful to you. Below is an example file with an extensive amount of custom fields, so you can get an idea of what you could include. Keep in mind the following:
- This file must be in Excel format. We cannot accept Text, Word, or SPSS files
- Make sure to delete extra spaces before and after the text in the cell
- Let us know if student identifiers may have leading zeroes (e.g., 00234657). Excel frequently cuts these off, leading to issues with uploading.
- To maintain consistency in data and identifiers, our standard procedure is to upload one campus email address OR one external ID per respondent. If your file also contains personal (non-campus) email addresses, we will upload the campus email as the identifier and the personal email will be included as a variable in the demographic upload.
Once your file is ready, we will set up an FTP folder for you, so you can securely transfer the file to us. Do NOT email us your demographic file to ensure your data is secure.
Some general information about using demographics in Baseline:
- If you are using campus email addresses as your identifier and you wish to link data from a certain project back to your demographics file, you must administer that project via a mass mailing sent to the same email addresses that were used as the identifiers, or use a validation screen asking respondents to provide their campus email.
- Should your campus’s email format change from the format previously used, (e.g., from jdoe@school.edu to john.doe@school.edu) please notify your consultant. Any changes in email addresses/format can lead to the creation of multiple user profiles in our system for the same respondent, thus severing data connections made via the old email address.