Hit by a perfect storm? Art & Design in the National Student Survey

Abstract

There has long been the suspicion amongst staff in Art & Design that the ratings given to their subject disciplines in the UK's National Student Survey are adversely affected by a combination of circumstances – a ‘perfect storm’. The ‘perfect storm’ proposition is tested by comparing ratings for Art & Design with those for a selection of other subjects chosen because they share some features that might lead to lower ratings on the survey. Data from a small-scale qualitative study are used to throw light on what might lie behind the sector-wide statistics. The comparisons suggest that there is some validity in the ‘perfect storm’ proposition. More broadly, the article points to the need for sophistication in interpreting findings from the survey, irrespective of the subject area.

Keywords:

• Art & Design
• National Student Survey
• subject comparisons
• quantitative analysis
• qualitative data

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful for helpful comments received from anonymous referees. Any sins of commission or omission are, of course, the authors' responsibility.

Notes

1. See reports which can be accessed via http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/nss under the subheading ‘Faculties and Departments’ (accessed March 16, 2013).

2. Students taking some health-related programmes also respond to a few non-optional statements relating to practical experience. The 22-item questionnaire (i.e. excluding the 23rd) can be found at http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Publications/nss-questionnaire.pdf (accessed March 16, 2013).

3. Details can be found at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/lt/publicinfo/kis/ and clicking on the tab ‘What the KIS contains’ (accessed March 16, 2013).

4. The ‘institutional mix’ of subjects influences an overall index of NSS (see Fielding, Dunleavy and Langan 2010).

5. The current JACS categories can be found at http://www.hesa.ac.uk/dox/jacs/JACS_complete.pdf (accessed March 16, 2013).

6. Some irrelevant lead-in verbiage has been excluded from the interviewers' quotations: the essence of what was said is unaltered.