Highlights of the CSXQ/CSEQ:
- Straightforward surveys looking at how engaged college students expect to be (CSXQ) or how engaged students feel they are (CSEQ)
- The CSXQ takes about 15 minutes to complete (100 fill-in-the-blank questions), the CSEQ about 30-40 minutes (87 of the same questions as appear on the CSXQ, plus additional questions asking students to report their growth in college)
- Surveys created by researchers who founded the idea of engagement as an important factor in student growth and satisfaction during college (the same group that created the NSSE survey)
Uses of the CSXQ/CSEQ:
- The surveys can be administered alone to gain an understanding of what students expect to encounter during college (CSXQ), or the activities students are engaged in and their self-reported growth after completion of some amount of college (CSEQ)
- The CSXQ can be administered before college starts or at the beginning of students’ first year, and the CSEQ can be administered at the end of the first or second year of college; student expectations can be compared with their actual experiences and inconsistencies can be examined
- Results of either survey can be viewed with regard to demographic information (some of which is asked for in the surveys themselves), or alongside other surveys looking at particular skills/outcomes (e.g., the SRLS for leadership, or the CCTDI for critical thinking) to examine relationships between student demographics/characteristics and expectations and experiences
Liberal Arts Outcomes and the CSXQ/CSEQ:
- The CSXQ and CSEQ are descriptive for the most part, and therefore can indicate "liberal arts activities" such as number of hours spent studying, relationship with faculty, etc.
- To the extent that student self-reported gains can indicate outcomes, the CSEQ can look at student development in areas like thinking analytically and pursuing ideas (for example), which might reflect broader liberal arts outcomes like effective reasoning and problem solving, lifelong learning, and others
- Looking at the overall institutional ethos of a campus may indeed be possible (at least in part) by using the CSXQ/CSEQ; student perceptions of the level of intellectual culture present on their campus could certainly be inferred by descriptions obtained through CSXQ/CSEQ data; other, more qualitative, approaches should also be used, however, to provide a more in-depth and rich representation of institutional philosophy
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