By noon today, we’ve had almost 1400 responses.  Before the survey launched, I felt that 1200 responses would be the bare minimum we would need for our data to be credible, so we’ve definitely exceeded that.  The graph below shows the comparison with other surveys again. I think this graph is useful because it provides necessary perspective.

ALTA has nearly eclipsed COMBO II’s entire response rate on the first email alone.  I expect that today we’ll see the response rate flatten out significantly, though.  That would make tomorrow’s scheduled reminder email well-timed.  If the rate of responses doesn’t decrease significantly by tomorrow, though, it might make sense to postpone the reminder by a day or two. Perhaps even more people are still planning to take the survey over the weekend but are waiting to finish an exam.  Either way, a reminder email might be convenient so students do not have to dig back for the email with the link.

If you apply the geometric series pattern with a common ration of 1/2 to the next three reminder emails’ response rate, it “predicts” that the emails will bring in 700, 350, and 175 responses, respectively.  This would mean a total of 2625 responses!  That’s about 50% of the school.

I don’t think any survey, whether administered by the USG or the university administration, has achieved such a response rate before.  Therefore, perhaps it’s too optimistic to expect that 1/2 of campus will take the survey (that would be amazing, though!), but I think it’s safe to expect over 2000 responses based on what we’ve seen.  That would be a very strong response rate and contribute significantly to the survey’s credibility and the ALTA projects’ effectiveness.

Strong student support for the ALTA project, as implied by record-breaking response rate to the survey, shows that students want to be proactive about their academic experience.  When ALTA brings forward suggestions, having this student support (“mandate,” if you want to be adventurous with your wording) will make our report much more compelling.

About 1400 responses on the first email! The two plateaus in the ALTA data are from the overnight periods. Responses are starting to pick up again for the day, as you can see by how it's hooking up again.