BCSSE Report Builder: Technical Details

The BCSSE Report Builder uses data from the three most recent years of BCSSE administration. For institutions that participated in multiple years, only data from the most recent year are used. The data are updated annually each Winter.
A summary of the percentages of institution and student characteristics in the current data file is available.

A minimum number of institutions is required to secure the identities of institutions within the data. When the selected column variable is student-level (i.e., gender, first-generation, race or ethnicity), the customized selections must yield at least six institutions overall or the results are not provided. When the selected column variable is institution-level (i.e., Carnegie classification or enrollment size), the customized selections must yield at least six institutions per column or the results are not provided.
The precise number of institutions is not given in reports. We round the total number of institutions included in the report to the nearest ten in order to prevent estimation of an individual institution’s results.
At least 250 students is required to provide minimally reliable results. However, users are advised to carefully review student counts before interpreting findings or drawing conclusions.

Frequency tables are produced using listwise deletion, employing only the items selected by the user. Therefore, counts may vary when other sets of items are selected.

The BCSSE Report Builder uses SAS/IntrNet Software, designed to take the existing BCSSE data and make them available on the Web. The report generator also uses PHP, mySQL, and JavaScript to interact with SAS/IntrNet.

Reports are generated as html, but can also be easily saved out in Excel format.
- -In Internet Explorer: Choose Page --> Save as --> create file name. Save in html format. You can then open the file from Excel.
- -In Mozilla Firefox: Choose File --> Save Page As --> create file name. Save in html format. You can then open the file from Excel.