Student Barometer survey

2024/25 survey (now bi-annual) running in two waves - first wave for new starters ran 19 November to 13 December 2024. Second wave to run in late Hilary/early Trinity 2025 for all students except final year undergraduates. 

2023 survey rested 

2022 survey was open from 21 November to 17 December 2022

The Student Barometer survey has been used since 2007 to survey students on their academic and social experience at Oxford. In the first few years only international students were surveyed and then this was expanded to home students in 2010, and then to include part-time students since 2012. The survey is managed by Etio (the government services arm of Tribal Group plc), formerly known as i-graduate, and participating institutions' results are benchmarked against UK and International Universities who take part in the survey, either by surveying their home and/or international students. The University took a break from the survey in 2023, and as of 2024 it will run every two years instead of annually.  Rather than a single wave, from 2024 the survey now runs in two waves at Oxford - a first wave runs in late Michaelmas for new starters only (19 November to 13 December in 2024), and a second wave in the Spring for all students (except final year undergraduates, who are surveyed separately in the National Student Survey).  

As of 2024 the survey will run in two waves - the first wave (late Michaelmas) surveys first year students only on their application and arrival experience; the second wave surveys almost all students, first year students included, on their experiences of learning, living and support services, in the spring. Final year undergraduates are not included in this survey as they are surveyed in the National Student Survey.

The survey has four main question areas about the student experience (arrival, learning, living and support services) and students are asked to rank their satisfaction on a four point scale (very dissatisfied, dissatisfied and satisfied and very satisfied). Students can also leave open and anonymous comments about each of these sections described above.

Questions are modified to include Oxford specific terminology but base questions cannot be changed fundamentally as they are used to benchmark us against other universities. It is possible to include additional question only asked for Oxford students and this has been done in previous years for COVID related questions and separate sections on the type of comms. channels that students use, or their use of and satisfaction with GLAM venues.

Oxford pre-loads some basic personal and course details so students are routed to relevant sections e.g. visa questions for international students, arrival questions for first year students only. This also means that students do not have to begin the survey by completing a form with their college, year of programme, programme title etc 

In previous years, all students were asked to complete the survey including part-time and full-time students and home and international students. In 2022, only PGT and UG students were asked to complete the survey as PGR students would be surveyed in the PRES survey from 18 April 2023. As of 2024 the survey runs in two waves - the first wave (late Michaelmas) surveys first year students only on arrival issues; the second wave surveys almost all students, first year students included, on the other question areas and runs in late Hilary/early Trinity.  Final year undergraduates are not included in this survey as they are surveyed in the National Student Survey. Email invitations are sent from the surveys@admin.ox.ac.uk email account.