Institutional report
Participating universities receive an Institutional Report containing institution-specific results of their students’ participation in BUSSE. BUSSE’s participation agreements prevent institution-specific results being made public, but a sample report is available for review. A breakdown of each of the report sections is provided below.
Respondent characteristics
This section of the report provides a descriptive overview of the characteristics of respondents, as well as by gender and first-generation status.
The BUSSE frequency and mean distribution shows a per-item analysis of respondents’ answers, which is also split to compare scores between gender and generation status.
Scale Means
- Mean scores of scales are provided here, also split between gender and generation status groups. By combining responses to related BUSSE questions, each scale offers valuable information about a distinct aspect of student engagement.
Psychometric portfolio
Click here for the latest psychometric properties of the BUSSE.
Using BUSSE data
BUSSE data is used to build on our understanding of first-year students’ expected engagement. Access to selected publications are provided here to illustrate how the data has been used.
The 2017 book, Engaging Students: Using Evidence to Promote Student Success includes a chapter on the BUSSE. To access Chapter 3 ‘Understanding and supporting students entering higher education’ click here.
In 2018, Universities South Africa (USAf), in collaboration with the SASSE team published a three-part report series on ‘Understanding our Students’. The first report in particular used BUSSE data to reflect on who our entering students are. Click here to access this report.
The BUSSE data has also featured prominently in conference presentations and user workshops. Click here for the presentation on “Who are our first-year students? What do they expect? How can we best support them?” presented at the 2018 SANRC FYE conference.