About the Survey
As community and technical colleges focus on improving student outcomes, they need a way to systematically understand the earliest experiences of their students. The Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) provides this information. Developed by national experts in the field of community and technical college research and practice, SENSE is designed to provide a clear picture of both student behaviors in the earliest weeks of college and the institutional practices that affect students during this critical time. SENSE is a research-based tool with multiple uses:
- Analyzing
Through the SENSE online reporting system, member colleges have the capability of generating frequency and means reports using either weighted or unweighted data.
- Benchmarking
The SENSE Benchmarks of Effective Practice with Entering Students denote areas that educational research has shown to be important to entering students’ college experience and educational outcomes. Every SENSE member college receives a standardized score for each benchmark. Each individual benchmark score is computed by averaging the scores on survey items that compose that benchmark. The standardized scores make it possible for colleges to compare their own performance across benchmarks and to compare their own performance with groups of similar colleges.
- Diagnosing
The SENSE online reporting system makes it very easy for colleges to target improvement efforts by disaggregating results to explore differences among student groups (e.g., male vs. female, developmental vs. non-developmental, full-time vs. part-time, etc.).
- Monitoring
With multiple administrations of SENSE, colleges can document and measure institutional effectiveness over time to examine the impact of interventions aimed at improving students' earliest collegiate experiences.
- Responding
Institutions may choose to use SENSE data to demonstrate accountability to the college community, as well as to accrediting agencies’ calls for institutional self-study and quality improvement strategies.
SENSE’s Survey Instrument
The SENSE instrument includes items that elicit information from students about their first impressions of the college; intake processes such as admissions, registration, assessment, placement, orientation, and financial aid; how they spend their time as they begin college; how they assess their earliest relationships and interactions with instructors, advisors, and other students; what kinds of work they are challenged to do; how the college supports their learning in the first few weeks; and so on.
You may download PDF files to view and print the following versions of the survey.
2009-2011 (PDF)
2008 (PDF)
2007 (PDF)
SENSE Special-Focus Modules
For an additional fee, a participating SENSE college may add a maximum of two Special-Focus Modules of up to 12 items each to the survey. These modules may be chosen from the Center’s collection of Standard Special-Focus Modules (also listed below). Alternatively, a college may opt to create Custom Special-Focus Modules by selecting items from the Additional Items Catalog, developing new items, or submitting a combination of both. Please visit the Membership Options section of the website for more information.
- SENSE Special-Focus Module - Academic Advising and Planning
- SENSE Special-Focus Module - Building Relationships
- SENSE Special-Focus Module - Commitment and Support
- SENSE Special-Focus Module - Engagement through Technology
- SENSE Special-Focus Module - Financial Assistance
- SENSE Special-Focus Module - Promising Practices for Community College Student Success*
- SENSE Special-Focus Module - Student Success Courses
*The Promising Practices for Community College Student Success module is part of a special study being conducted by the Center and is free of charge for the SENSE 2012 administration. For the 2012 administration, colleges will automatically receive this module free of charge unless they select TWO fee-based module options.
The Research Behind SENSE
This linked Annotated Bibliography provides information about the literature supporting the SENSE instrument survey items.
Center Responds to Questions Regarding Student Engagement Surveys
For college leaders, faculty, researchers, and members of the media who may be seeking to understand the purposes and uses of student engagement surveys, we provide here a brief set of Questions and Answers.
See the article Will These Trees Ever Bear Fruit? A Response to the Special Issue on Student Engagement (PDF) by Alexander C. McCormick and Kay McClenney in the The Review of Higher Education for more information.