Quality and Interaction: The Higher Education Sector and Society, 2013

The Ministry of Education and Research is funding a strategic research project (2012-2014) on quality in higher education and interaction between the higher education sector and society. NIFU - Nordic Institute for Studies of Innovation, Research and Education - leads the project. An important part of the data base is an electronic survey of permanent scientific employees in the university and college sector, which has now been completed. The response rate in this survey ended up at 50.2. If you calculate the response rate by also including incomplete answers, it is 52.5 percent. Considering the challenges involved in obtaining a high response rate from this group of respondents, and achieved response rates from previous similar surveys, we consider this result to be very satisfactory.

The purpose of the survey was to get the permanent scientific staff's assessments, views and experiences related to the following main topics: 1. Teaching, 2. Research activities and 3. Outreach activities / dissemination. In addition, the survey contained a short introductory section on background information such as country of birth, country of graduation, any professional positions, as well as a question about views on management and leadership at its department.

The permanent scientific staff are important norm bearers for how the quality of research, education and dissemination is managed, created and assessed. The permanent scientific staff therefore constitutes the population for the study.