Response rate
Table 1 below shows that the overall institutional response rate was 69% of institutions. Responses were higher from universities and lower for CEGEPs.
Table 1: Response rate by type of institution
| Full questionnaire | Short questionnaire | Total response | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resp. | Pop. | % | Resp. | Resp. | Pop | % | |||
| Universities | 49 | 72 | 68 | 7 | 56 | 72 | 77 | ||
| Colleges except Quebec | 54 | 81 | 67 | 1 | 55 | 81 | 68 | ||
| CEGEPs (Québec) | 25 | 50 | 50 | 4 | 29 | 50 | 58 | ||
| Total | 128 | 203 | 63 | 12 | 140 | 203 | 69 | ||
Resp. = responding institutions; Pop. = all institutions in population base
The response rate tended to be lower from the smaller institutions (see Table 2).
Table 2: Response rate by size range of colleges (including CEGEPs)
| Total response | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Resp. | Pop. | % | |
| <2,000 | 27 | 46 | 59 |
| 2,000-9,999 | 42 | 66 | 64 |
| 10,000+ | 15 | 19 | 79 |
| Total | 84 | 131 | 64 |
It can be seen that 15 out of the 19 colleges with more than 10,000 students responded (79%), compared to 59% for those colleges with fewer than 2000 students.
A similar pattern was observed for the universities. For the 29 universities with fewer than 7,500 students, the response rate was 62%, but 86% for the 43 with more than 7,500 students. Nevertheless, the response rate for all size ranges of institution was 50% or more, including for small colleges and CEGEPs.
Since there was a higher response from the larger institutions, the survey responders represent institutions with 78% of the student population base, as can be seen from Table 3.
Table 3: Student headcounts for institutions responding compared to overall student headcounts.
| Survey responders | Student population | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Questionnaire | Full | Short | Total | No. | % |
| Universities | 916,544 | 104,978 | 1,021,522 | 1,239,801 | 82% |
| Colleges | 372,565 | 167 | 372,732 | 512,785 | 73% |
| CEGEPs | 80,063 | 12,518 | 92,581 | 162,762 | 57% |
| Total | 1,369,172 | 117,663 | 1,486,835 | 1,915,348 | 78% |
Also there is a broad spread of institutional representation in the survey for almost all the provinces and territories (Table 4):
Table 4: Response rate by province
| Universities | Colleges/CEGEPs | Total | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Questionnaire | Full | Short | All | Full | Short | All | Resp. | All |
| Alberta | 6 | 0 | 6 | 10 | 14 | 16 | 20 | |
| British Columbia | 9 | 1 | 11 | 9 | 15 | 19 | 26 | |
| Manitoba | 3 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 8 | |
| N. Brunswick | 2 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 8 | |
| Newfoundland | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | |
| NW Territories | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Nova Scotia | 5 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 9 | ||
| Nunavut | 1 | 0 | 1 | |||||
| Ontario | 15 | 3 | 20 | 21 | 26 | 39 | 46 | |
| PEI | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | ||
| Quebec | 7 | 3 | 15 | 25 | 4 | 50 | 39 | 65 |
| Saskatchewan | 1 | 2 | 5 | 10 | 6 | 12 | ||
| Yukon | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Total | 49 | 7 | 72 | 79 | 5 | 131 | 140 | 203 |
Responses from Quebec as a whole were slightly lower than average (60% for all Quebec institutions) compared with that for the universities and colleges outside Québec (72%). The response to the national survey may have been influenced by a similar request for extensive enrolment data at the same time by the Québec Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur.
Overall, especially considering that this was a voluntary survey, the responses provide an excellent, representative sample of colleges and universities across all provinces, and across all sizes of institution, representing 69% of all institutions and 78% of all students studying for institutional credit at Canadian public post-secondary institutions.
