We understand that your campus may have concerns about over-assessing. We will work closely with you to create a survey schedule and sampling plan that will work best based on any other national assessments in which you are participating. In most instances and when appropriate based on undergraduate enrollment size, we will recommend a minimum sample size for each student survey of 2500 students. This recommendation is based on several sampling considerations and the typical response rate to online surveys.
Given the sampling considerations, the number of responses needed to have between 4 and 5% error and a 95% confidence interval is approximately 400-600 for an infinite size population. Given the typical response rate of between 15%-25%, your campus will need to survey 2500 students to obtain 500 completed responses. Larger sample sizes are highly recommended especially for larger campuses and in the instances where no other national assessments are taking place.
Creating a Sample
While it is preferable to have each campus pull their student samples, Anthology is available to assist campuses with sampling issues. If full assistance is needed, please provide an email file that includes the entire undergraduate population of students (both full- and part-time) with the following fields: email address, class year, housing status (if doing residence life), fraternity/sorority member (if doing Fraternity and Sorority study). Anthology Consultants will create a stratified random sample from the list provided.