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Survey Results 2009

 

We are pleased to present the initial results from our survey of users.

The results

We had responses from 108 people. About half of them worked in government agencies and half in tertiary education organisations. Amongst the latter was a very strong response from private training establishments. The people responding spanned policy advisors, researchers, administrators and managers. Nearly all lived in New Zealand. Most used the internet at least once a day for work or study.

There was fairly even interest across the topics areas that we publish under, with ‘learners in tertiary education’ and ‘performance of the tertiary education system’ having the most wide spread interest. There was also reasonably even use made of the different types of reports we produce, with the strongest use being made of our statistical tables.

Most people who responded had found out about our reports and information through several different channels. The most frequent being the Tertiary Analysis Newsletter, web searches and hearing about reports from others.

When asked how they would like to find out about reports, nearly everyone said through email. Web pages and conference presentations were the next most favoured options. There was limited interest in options such as twitter and facebook. One comment pointed out that these are not accessible in many workplaces.

Most people said they wanted to hear about reports and information as and when it is released and only a quarter wanted a ‘once a month’ newsletter. People were more evenly split between wanting to hear about all tertiary education information and only wanting to hear about selected topics. Most people were happy just to access information on-line, although there is some ongoing demand for hard copies as well.

Changes being made

We have moved to:

• providing email notices of reports and information as and when it is released
• retaining a bi-monthly newsletter that provides a consolidated summary of our work.
• making emails the primary communication of new work and including a note on how to request hard copies (where these have been produced).

Once we have moved onto a new email distribution system, we plan to redesign the subscription so that you can select which of these you want to receive. This would include selecting which topic areas you would like notices about.

We are also looking at other ways we can better promote our work throughout the tertiary education sector. Comments in the survey suggested that quite a lot of people are still not aware of what we produce.

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