National Student Survey - pressured to be positive?

After students at Kingston University ringing alarm bells that staff were encouraging them to score the institution positively in the National Student Survey, hundreds of students have been contacting the BBC with similar tales.

I was lucky enough to be in the first group of undergrads to be subjected to the survey in 2005 at Goldsmiths. And staff there continuously told us to rate the College positively. Their arguments for it were that if the College kept its excellent reputation, our degrees would be more valuable in the future. Personally, I ignored their advice, and answered the survey honestly.

The National Student Survey results are used by institutions and Students' Unions for quality enhancement purposes, as well as being a really useful resource for prospective students deciding where to study. Institutions who use the data effectively can flag areas for improvement, and highlight areas of best practice to then be disseminated around the institution. Students' Unions can use the data to inform their campaigns and representation activities, as well as using the data to inform their Student Written Submissions if the institution is due for review/audit. Recently I have been involved in writing a Student Written Submission and the NSS data was the single most valuable data source available - to be used of course with other evidence bases.

If institutions honestly think that by pushing students to be positive in their NSS responses, I suspect they'd be gravely mistaken. After studying at undergraduate level for three years, final year students will have developed analytical and evaluative skills, and will do as they please!

In the past some students have accused Ipsos Mori (who coordinate the survey) of using very aggressive marketing tactics to get students to complete the survey - including emailing / texting / phoning students who don't respond. There's even a Facebook group called 'SCREW THE NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY'. (Students can opt out however). Institutions NSS results cannot be published unless they achieve a 40% response rate (that's massive in real terms - pollsters like Gallup and YouGov struggle to pick up 10%), which is why students are inundated with various marketing messages. One student on the BBC website from Bournemouth University complained via the university's website that he had been disappointed to have a lecture interrupted to "pressurise us into rating the university well in the National Student Survey". I suspect many institutions interrupt teaching to encourage students to complete the survey, but institutions should never fall into the trap of encouraging students to be positive - they should be able to be honest. Without student feedback, universities cannot improve.

Kingston have obviously made a mistake. Rather than causing the institution to be viewed more positively, their behaviour has had quite the opposite affect.