The Student Satisfaction Inventory: Data to Capture the Student Experience

The Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) is the original instrument in the family of Satisfaction-Priorities Survey instruments.  With versions that are appropriate for four-year public/private institutions and two-year community colleges, the Student Satisfaction Inventory provides institutional insight and external national benchmarks to inform decision-making on more than 600 campuses across North America. 

With its comprehensive approach, the Student Satisfaction Inventory gathers feedback from current students across all class levels to identify not only how satisfied they are, but also what is most important to them. Highly innovative when it first debuted in the mid-1990’s, the approach has now become the standard in understanding institutional strengths (areas of high importance and high satisfaction) and institutional challenges (areas of high importance and low satisfaction).

With these indicators, college leaders can celebrate what is working on their campus and target resources in areas that have the opportunity for improvement. By administering one survey, on an annual or every-other-year cycle, campuses can gather student feedback across the student experience, including instructional effectiveness, academic advising, registration, recruitment/financial aid, plus campus climate and support services, and track how satisfaction levels increase based on institutional efforts.

Along with tracking internal benchmarks, the Student Satisfaction Inventory results provide comparisons with a national external norm group of like-type institutions to identify where students are significantly more or less satisfied than students nationally (the national results are published annually). In addition, the provided institutional reporting offers the ability to slice the data by all of the standard and customizable demographic items to provide a clearer approach for targeted initiatives. 

Like the Adult Student Priorities Survey and the Priorities Survey for Online Learners (the other survey instruments in the Satisfaction-Priorities Surveys family), the data gathered by the Student Satisfaction Inventory can support multiple initiatives on campus, including to inform student success efforts, to provide the student voice for strategic planning, to document priorities for accreditation purposes and to highlight positive messaging for recruitment activities. Student satisfaction has been positively linked with higher individual student retention and higher institutional graduation rates, getting right to the heart of higher education student success. 

Sandra Hiebert, director of institutional assessment and academic compliance at McPherson College (KS) shares, “We have leveraged what we found in the SSI data to spark adaptive challenge conversations and to facilitate action decisions to directly address student concerns. The process has engaged key components of campus and is helping the student voice to be considered. The data and our subsequent actions were especially helpful for our accreditation process.”

See how you can strengthen student success with the Student Satisfaction Inventory

Learn more about best practices for administering the online Student Satisfaction Inventory at your institution, which can be done any time during the academic year on your institution’s timeline.