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Survey of Canadian Career College Students - March 2008

2. Research Methodology

The following section describes the methodology used for Phase II of the Career Colleges Student Survey 2005 -2006, the in-school student survey.

2.1 Scope of Work

Phase II involved the following research activities:

Recruitment of private career colleges to allow in-school surveying of students;
Development and pre-test of an in-school student survey; and
In-school surveying of students attending private career colleges throughout Canada.

Each of these research activities is described in greater detail in the following sections.

2.2 Private Career College Recruitment

To facilitate the Survey of Canadian Career College Students, an Institutional Survey was designed to collect information on programs, credentials, funding, instructors and willingness to participate in the in-school survey of students. The Institutional Survey was distributed to a random and representative sample of 800 private career colleges selected from a database of private career colleges. The database, which included registered private career colleges Canada-wide, was compiled from provincial and territorial Ministry of Education and/or Advanced Education government websites. For further refinement, the database was cross-referenced against the NACC member list and the Canada Student Loans Program list of designated schools across Canada. Duplicate records were removed and unique records were added to the database, resulting in 2,423 institution entries.

The database was modified as institutions were contacted and further information was collected on their eligibility to participate in the student survey. An institution was considered eligible if:

less than 30% of the student population was enrolled in either English as a Second Language or correspondence programs; and
the institution receives less than 50% of its total funding directly from government sources.

Initially 1,622 institutions received the Institutional Survey to determine eligibility to participate in the Survey of Canadian Career College Students. Of the 1,622 schools contacted 824 provided information and 447 were deemed ineligible to participate in the in-school student survey due to their proportion of ESL or correspondence students and their level of government funding. A private vocational career college was classified as being unable to participate if the institution or campus:

no longer offered classes or had no students enrolled;
was closing down;
offered English as a Second Language to 30% or more of its student population;
offered correspondence programs to 30% or more of its student population;
did not offer programming at the location contacted, acting only as a head office (programs were offered at an alternate location);
was a high school, CEGEP, public college or university; or
directly received 50% or more of its funding from the provincial or federal government.

Of those eligible to participate, 286 agreed to allow the Consultant to survey students in class. A delay in the survey start date, due to privacy concerns of HRSDC, resulted in attrition of a large number of institutions from the study. To compensate, the Consultant contacted the remaining institutions. Of the total 2,423 institutions contacted, 384 were eligible and agreed to participate in the in-school survey.

Detailed in Table 2-1 is the outcome of all 2,423 contacts to the estimated universe of private career colleges to determine eligibility and willingness to participate in the in-school student survey. Information is presented for both NACC-affiliated institutions and organizations that were not affiliated with NACC (non-NACC).

Table 2-1
Outcome of Contacts with Private Career Colleges

Outcome	Total	NACC	Non-NACC
Refused Institutional Survey (No Information on School)	504	65	439
Refused to participate in the Institutional Survey or provide information on eligibility	504	65	439
Non-Qualifier (Not Included in Defined Population)*	1,121	107	1,014
Institution no longer in business	186	20	166
Institution not in estimated universe**	312	30	282
Institution does not give classes or have students	48	8	40
Institution has no full-time students	237	21	216
More than 30% ESL or correspondence students	89	17	72
More than 50% government funding	187	6	181
Combination of more than 30% ESL/correspondence and more than 50% government funding	27	3	24
Unspecified	35	2	33
Qualified (Included in Defined Population)	798	269	529
Provided information through the Institutional Survey and qualified	781	265	516
Provided information through telephone interview	17	4	13
Total	2,423	441	1,982
* Institution did not have to complete the Institutional Survey to be classified as a non- qualifier. Institutions not considered a private career college included private elementary/high schools, non-profit centres, immigrant training centres with ESL, hospital centres with practicum component of university program, duplicate schools, etc. It should be noted that additional information pertaining to the Canadian career college system is available in the Phase I: Institutional Survey report.

2.3 Development and Pre-Test of the In-School Student Survey

The Consultant began working with HRSDC, NACC and CMSF in November of 2005 to develop the in-school student survey. The survey was designed to gather information concerning the:

socio-economic profile of students who attend career colleges;
highest level of education obtained by career college students prior to enrolling in their current program;
reasons for enrolling in current career college program;
student satisfaction with program/school; and
methods used by career college students to finance education, in addition to other finance issues.

The survey was approved for field-testing in March 2006. Field-testing of the In-School Student Survey was conducted in Edmonton, Alberta, at two colleges: Academy of Learning (Wednesday, March 15, 2006) and Marvel College (Thursday, March 16, 2006). In total, 159 students completed the student survey at these two institutions, with 44% of the students agreeing to participate in the follow-up Graduate Outcomes Survey to be conducted at a later date. The student survey was programmed and tested on Teleform, a survey scanning instrument, to support the field-test. Given that the field test did not find any issues with the survey instrument, it was finalized for use in full survey administration.

2.4 In-School Student Survey Administration

Full in-school survey administration occurred from September 18, 2006, to February 21, 2007. The Consultant contacted schools:

eligible and agreeing to participate in the in-school student survey based on the Institutional Survey; and
that had not yet provided information to assess participation eligibility.

Once assessed as eligible and agreeing to participate, a convenient date for data collection was selected by the institution. The institution was asked to provide a reliable estimate of the number of students available for surveying on the data collection date. A representative from R. A. Malatest & Associates Ltd. with enhanced security clearance visited each institution, and distributed and collected the survey from students on the agreed upon date, as well as providing information and support to students completing the survey. All distributed surveys were collected and accounted for prior to leaving the institution. The Consultant contacted all institutions two to three days prior to the data collection date.

To support high response rates at each institution, the data collection time was determined around class schedules to allow data collection from as many unique classes as possible within a day. At larger schools the Consultant collected data across more than a single day. The largest schools were visited twice during the data collection period to allow collection from more than one student intake.

In total the Consultant visited 30 institutions for multiple student intakes. Other methods used to increase the number of survey completions from each institution included:

Visiting institutions at different times in a single day;
Visiting an institution on multiple days; and
Leaving surveys for students to complete at the start of the day that were collected at the end of the day.

The distribution of institutions visited for the in-school student survey is shown in Table 2-2.

Table 2-2
Distribution of Institutions and Survey Completions by Province

In total, 13,721 in-school student surveys were completed from the population of private career college students in Canada. Of those completing the in-school survey, 8,324 (61%) agreed to be contacted for the Graduate Outcomes Survey and 11,250 (82%) agreed to share their survey responses with the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation.

2.4.1 Survey Coverage

The in-school survey was completed with 13,721 students from institutions across Canada. The total number of eligible students estimated to be enrolled in private career colleges in 2006 was 156,107. The estimate of eligible students is obtained from the Survey of Canadian Career College Students Phase I: Institutional Survey Report. Based on random sampling approaches, the maximum sample error for this study is therefore estimated to be ± 0.8% (19 times out of 20).

2.4.2 Advantages of In-School Survey Administration

In-school survey administration yielded several important benefits for this project, including:

ability to directly answer students' questions about the survey;
ability to minimize concerns among students that their responses could be seen by school staff and/or school administrators; and
ability to help students who had literacy issues in terms of assisting in survey completion.

Overall, the Consultant estimated that the response rate among students was more than 98%, as very few students refused to complete the survey.

2.4.3 Report Overview

Data provided in the Survey of Canadian Career College Students Phase II: In-School Survey has been weighted to reflect the proportion of students in the private career college universe attending institutions either holding or not holding membership in the National Association of Career Colleges within each province. The private career college student universe estimate is published in the Survey of Canadian Career College Students Phase I: Institutional Survey and includes students eligible to participate in this survey. Institutions were deemed eligible to participate if less than 30% of the students attending were in ESL or accessed programming through correspondence and the institution received less than 50% government funding. English as a Second Language programs were excluded as the programs are not intended to lead to a specific career but instead are designed to support immigrant integration. Correspondence programs were excluded as they would not allow in-school surveying of the students. The government funding criteria was set low enough to exclude public institutions but high enough to allow a sufficient sample, as many private career colleges receive public funds in the form of student tuition.

Throughout the report, comparisons are made between findings from the Survey of Canadian Career College Students and the findings from the 2006 Canadian College Student Finances Survey, completed by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation and published as the Canadian College Student Finance Report whenever significant results are compared across program types and regions, the results discussed are significant at the 0.5 alpha level using a t-test of significant differences.

The report is presented under the following sections:

Profile of Students;
Student Pathways to Private Career Colleges;
Private Career College Programming;
Program Financing;
Student Debt;
Satisfaction with Program/Institution;
Post-Program Career; and
Conclusions.

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Date Modified:: 2008-04-07

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