NSSE Report Builder: Technical Details

Data

• The NSSE Report Builder—Public for the updated NSSE uses data from the recent NSSE administration. The data are updated annually in the Fall.
• Summary tables of the percentages of institution and student characteristics in the current data file are available.

Restrictions

• A minimum number of institutions is required to secure the identities of institutions within the data. When the selected grouping variable is student-level (i.e., gender, major field category, first-generation, race or ethnicity), the custom selections must yield at least six institutions overall or the results are not provided. When the selected grouping variable is institution-level (i.e., Carnegie 2010 Basic Classification or enrollment size), the custom selections must yield at least six institutions per group 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.

Calculations

• 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 reports are not weighted. NSSE weights are produced primarily for the standard institutional reports. They are derived from first-year and senior population statistics, adjusting for response patterns in enrollment status and gender. The weights are not valid when data are filtered into selected subpopulations.

Software

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

Saving Reports

• To save your report:
  • -In Internet Explorer: Choose Page --> Save as --> create file name. Save in html format.
  • -In Mozilla Firefox: Choose File --> Save Page As --> create file name. Save in html format.
  • -In Google Chrome: Right click on page --> Save as --> create file name. Save as type: Webpage, Complete.
  After your report is saved, you can reopen your report in a browser or open it in Excel to edit it.