Methodology

To understand perceptions and continue benchmarking our progress from 2015, the Alumni Association commissioned the 2023 Alumni Attitude Survey. This survey, administered by Jerold Pearson of eAdvancement Consulting, was administered online from Feb. 21 - March 30, 2023.

 

Response

Survey Sample Size and Emails

Invitations were emailed to a random sample of 16,267 degree holders from the class of 1965-2021 for whom SCU had an email address (17,683 minus 1,416 hard bounces), and five reminders were emailed to non-respondents at various intervals.

Exclusions

Current and former Trustees, Regents, Alumni Association Board members; current SCU employees and students; and alumni flagged for “do not email” and/or “do not contact” were excluded from the sample.

Survey Participants & Response Rate

1,487 alumni participated in the survey (1,307 completed it and 180 answered some of the questions) – a response rate of approximately 9% (approximate because of the unknown number of inactive addresses, spam filters, and other delivery failures).

Response rates have declined over the years for most types of surveys in most industries. Alumni surveys are no exception and, according to eAdvancement, have seen similar declines at other universities that conducted similar surveys.

Confidence Interval & Coverage Error

A responding random sample of 1,487 has a 95% confidence interval of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

 

Weighting

Weighting is a statistical procedure used to align a responding sample with the actual survey population so it is representative of the population by relevant variables (usually demographic variables).

The population of alumni for whom SCU has an email address is younger than the living alumni population as a whole. Furthermore – and as usual – response increased with age (degree year) and was much greater among donors than non-donors. For these reasons, the survey data was weighted to be representative of the living alumni population from 1965 to 2021 by degree year, donor status, and degree level. The weighted data is also weighted to represent the living alumni population by school, gender, and region.

 

Notes

Donors & Demographics

Donors are defined as alumni who made a gift of any size to any SCU designation since July 1, 2018. All data concerning donor status, degree year, degree level, school, gender, and region comes from the SCU database, not from responses to questions asked in the survey. Age, ethnicity, and religious preference, however, are self-reported. The sections comparing responses across demographic groups only discuss the questions that differ. If a question is not mentioned, the response does not significantly differ between the groups being compared.

Alumni Attitude Survey 2015

The previous survey, where the current results are compared, was conducted online from April 19 - May 23, 2015, with a responding random sample of 1,817 SCU degree holders from 1960 to 2014.

 

Bio of Jerold Pearson

Jerold Pearson is a Principal in eAdvancement Consulting, a consortium of independent consultants in alumni engagement, communications, and fundraising. For 22 years (1994 to 2016), he was also the Director of Market Research at Stanford University – first in the Office of Development and then in the Stanford Alumni Association.

 

Survey Questionnaire

The questions asked on the 2023 Alumni Attitude Survey are available for viewing online.