information on street and email addresses, telephone numbers, and employers. The advantage of starting with Alumni Association data is that the unit’s mission is to maintain contact with former graduates, so the information should be current. The alumni data were supplemented by using USU’s BANNER Information System to obtain all the other contact information maintained by the university.
In most cases this included
several other addresses and telephone numbers, such as those for next-of-kin. All of this information was provided to the departments to assist them in making contact with their recent graduates.
SAMPLE SELECTION
The survey focused on students who received a bachelor’s degree from USU between July 1, 2004 and June 30, 2005. More than three thousand students received bachelor’s degrees over this twelve month period. The reason for the time lag between graduation and survey was to assure that students would have had a reasonable amount of time to find employment or to establish themselves in a graduate program.
The amount of effort needed to conduct the surveys varied greatly among
departments. Secondary Education had only five graduates (because prospective teachers obtain their degrees through another department, such as history or biology), while the department of Business Administration had 281. To make the task more manageable, those departments with more than 50 graduates were asked to complete survey forms for a random sample of at least 50 of their students. Those units with less than 50 graduates were asked to survey as many of their students as possible. In reporting aggregated results for individual colleges and for the university, the responses were weighted to reflect this sampling approach.
COMPLETION RATES Survey information was distributed to departments in April, 2006 and completed
forms were to be returned by early June. A review of the data indicated that the intended survey approach had been followed in the vast majority of cases.
The number of bachelor’s degree recipients, the number of completed surveys,
and the completion rates for each department are shown below. For departments with 50 or more degree recipients, the percent is based on the goal of 50 completed surveys that was established for the departments. Note that some of these departments completed more than 50 surveys because they wanted more complete information about their graduates. For example, Accounting collected information on 110 of its 129 graduates— 220% of the goal of 50 students. (For an explanation of the abbreviations used below, see Appendix B.)
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