Assessment News: Importance and Opinion of Non-Academic Support Services
Assessment News: Importance and Opinion of Non-Academic Support Services
In the Graduating Student Survey,which is statistically representative of the entire student population, students were asked to indicate the level of importance and their satisfaction with non-academic support services offered at the university.
In the table below Importance was computed by summing Very Important and Moderately Important responses. Opinion was computed by summing Very Satisfied and Satisfied responses. The number of respondents who reported not using a particular service and the number of missing responses were each subtracted from the total number of respondents so that the percentages that comprised Opinion reflected a number comparable to those who had used the service.
The table can be read simply in terms of Importance. For this purpose, the services scoring above 80% are ranked (numbers in parentheses). The table can also be read simply in terms of Opinion. For this purpose, the services scoring above 90% are ranked (numbers in parentheses). Gap was computed by subtracting Importance from Opinion. A negative gap can be thought of as representing expectations that have not been met, that is, opinion does not meet importance. A positive gap connotes the converse, that is, opinion exceeds importance.
If a particular service is thought to be highly important to respondents, then opinion of the service has to be very high in order for there to be no negative gap. Alternatively, where respondents do not think the service is as important, opinion of the users can be lower without producing a negative gap.
It should also be noted that while no correlation was run this time, in the past, use of the service has been highly correlated with perceived importance. That is, respondents rate as most important those services they use the most. The services students use the most are the very cases that may show the most impact in the Gap analysis: High use and therefore high importance require high opinion to produce no gap while low use and therefore low importance (relatively) does not require as high an opinion to avoid a negative gap. This appears to have worked in favor of low use programs since they are associated with the highest positive gaps, and against Parking Services which is highly important and of which respondents don't have a high opinion.
The following table shows the summary of the data. The raw data can be found on the University Assessment Web Site at www.usu.edu/~asmnt.
| Non-Academic Support Service | Importance (%) (Very Important + Moderately Important) | Opinion (%) (Very Satisfied + Satisfied) | Gap (%) (Opinion - Importance) |
| Parking Service | 86.5 (2) | 31.8 | -54.7 |
| Statesman | 86.8 (1) | 83.6 | -3.2 |
| Recreation (HPER/Field House) | 83.4 (3) | 82.3 | -1.1 |
| Shuttle Bus | 84.3 (4) | 88.5 | 4.2 |
| USU Police | 83.0 (5) | 89.1 | 6.1 |
| Food Services | 78.8 | 85.1 | 6.3 |
| Varsity Athletics | 69.0 | 86.0 | 17.0 |
| Campus Recreation | 71.3 | 90.5 (8) | 19.2 |
| Performing Arts Series | 69.6 | 94.1 (3) | 24.5 |
| Council of Student Clubs & Organizations | 63.8 | 88.6 | 24.9 |
| Outdoor Recreation | 67.8 | 96.0 (1) | 28.2 |
| STAB Activities | 62.0 | 91.7 (6) | 29.7 |
| Val R. Christensen Service Center | 63.3 | 94.5 (2) | 31.2 |
| KUSU/Utah Public Radio | 56.4 | 89.9 | 33.5 |
| Homecoming | 54.8 | 91.0 (7) | 36.2 |
| Convocations | 55.0 | 92.3 (5) | 37.3 |
| Game Room | 51.2 | 88.8 | 37.6 |
| Poetry and a Beverage | 45.2 | 89.9 | 44.7 |
| Parent’s Weekend | 41.4 | 86.5 | 45.1 |
| Robins Awards | 41.8 | 89.2 | 47.4 |
| Arts & Lectures Series | 43.5 | 92.9 (4) | 49.4 |
| Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Office | 31.9 | 87.1 | 55.2 |
utah state today/archives/May 2003/archives prior to Sept 2002/
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