National Survey of Student Engagement

National Survey of Benchmark Recalculation 2007
Student Engagement University of Hawaii at Hilo



In our continuing efforts to provide institutions with the best information possible, changes were
made in 2004 in the way we calculate the NSSE benchmarks of effective educational practice. These
changes allowed us to produce student-level benchmark scores, enhancing the usability of the
information for intra-institutional comparisons. For example, institutions can now examine
benchmarks at the school, college, or department level, or can compare particular subgroups of
students (e.g., men and women or seniors from two different years). The changes in the calculation
require that benchmarks prior to 2004 be recalculated to more accurately compare institutional
performance over the years using the same metric (Table 1).

Another change made to the survey in 2004 affects the information in Table 1. Response options for
the ‘enriching’ items (question 7 on the survey) were altered in 2004 making it untenable to compare
newer results on these items with those of 2003 and earlier. For this reason, the Student-Faculty
Interaction benchmark is recalculated without one item and the Enriching Educational Experiences
benchmark is not recalculated.


Table 1
aRecalculated Benchmarks for NSSE Participation since 2001
bBenchmark Class 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Level of FY 46.9 47.5 48.8 47.1 46.6
Academic
Challenge SR 57.0 54.9 54.5 52.8 55.2 ...