As a result of a redesigned survey, Iona College will be participating in the National Survey of Student Engagement beginning Feb. 20, for the second time in two years.

Normally, this survey is given at Iona once every three years, so students will participate in their freshmen and senior years.

The redesign means that it’s necessary for another survey to be taken as it will provide results relevant to the newest benchmarks set by NSSE.

NSSE is a survey that hundreds of four-year colleges and universities take part in every year.

Results from the survey are used in a few ways.

Institutions can find out how students are spending their time on and around campus, and what can be done to improve the entire educational and extracurricular experience.

Potential students can also use the information to get a more in-depth look at what different institutions provide to their students, and if it lines up with what they’re looking for in a school.

Response rate for the survey, however, was very low last year.

Not only at Iona, but across the country, student participation in NSSE has been decreasing.

The 2010 survey saw nearly 362,000 freshmen and senior students providing their input, with that number dropping to 285,000 for 2012.

Last year saw an increase to 335,000 students, although there were more schools participating last year than in 2010, so there were still fewer students per institution participating.

Iona’s participation in this survey is very important according to Dr. Joseph Wycoff, the Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Planning.

“What we want to understand is how we build the Iona community that students wanted when they chose our college,” said Wycoff.

“This gives us a real opportunity to not only understand what our students want particularly at this time, but how we can be doing better in comparison to other colleges and universities in the nation. It’s our most effective survey in that respect.”

Wycoff also recognizes the drop-off in student cooperation at Iona in this survey.

This may have something to do with the amount of surveys students are asked to fill out throughout the year.

“We have a lot of surveys going on on campus, and we’re probably contacting students a little bit too much throughout the year,” he said.

He explained that when it’s time for students to participate in the NSSE, they’ve already been contacted multiple times for other surveys.

Eventually, students ignore the many requests to participate in the surveys.

The amount of surveys students at Iona are asked to take may be deterring them from participating in the ones, like NSSE, that matter the most.

Student awareness of NSSE may also be a determining factor in why participation has gotten lower.

Despite every student on campus receiving notification of the survey through email, as well as flyers placed at the front desks of various residential buildings, most students seemed to not know that the survey was taking place, or even what it is.

Out of 15 randomly selected freshmen and senior students, only 2 were aware that Iona was participating.

According to Wycoff, there’s another survey coming directly from NSSE on March 4 that students are highly encouraged to take part in.

Hopefully, this year there will be a large enough participation number to provide enough data to render the survey viable.