Jisc survey guidance connects student comments with decisions

Updated Oct 02, 2026

Jisc survey guidance published on 3 September 2026 connects comments with the decisions they inform. The final Survey Summer School instalment offers university survey teams practical advice on reading responses and reporting action.

What the Jisc survey guidance covers

Jisc recommends checking a respondent's other answers before quoting their comment, and reporting critical feedback. It urges teams to move from findings to action:

Turn findings into named actions.

The instalment is guidance for Online Surveys users, rather than a software release or national survey change. Its recommendations are not an evaluation of improved participation or student experience.

The supporting documentation makes an operational detail explicit: filters affect both charts and exported data. Jisc's filtering guidance describes selection by response date, question and answers. Its download guidance also documents an option to exclude free-text columns from CSV exports. Analysts should therefore check what a file contains before using it.

What this means for institutions

Our recommendation is to agree an export handover between survey owners and analysts. Record the questionnaire version, collection dates, active filters, included questions and response count. Check that the expected comment fields are present. A file labelled with a module's name should also explain whether it includes all submitted responses or a selected group.

Keep the wording students saw alongside the dataset. If departments use shared survey templates, record local adaptations before comparing results. For example, a question about assessment instructions and a question about feedback on marked work address different experiences. Similar theme labels should not obscure that distinction.

For quality committees, we suggest a reporting format that separates the concern, supporting evidence, proposed response and review date. Ask the responsible team to state how it will check whether the response helped. Reporting that a change was made and evaluating its effects are separate tasks; retain both in the follow-up plan.

How student feedback analysis connects

When categorising comments, preserve qualifications within each response. A student might value detailed feedback while finding it too late to use. That illustrative comment contains both praise and a timing concern; a summary should retain both. The NSS open-text analysis methodology explains why topic measures, coverage and interpretation limits need to remain visible. Its NSS-specific reporting thresholds should not be transferred automatically to a local survey.

We also recommend documenting exclusions and reviewing ambiguous classifications. Keep the supporting text available to authorised reviewers, with appropriate redaction and access controls. The aim is to let a reviewer check how a reported theme follows from the supplied comments, while recognising that those comments may not represent everyone invited to respond.

FAQ

Q: What should university survey teams do now?

A: Check a recent export against its survey settings, document its scope and confirm that the expected comments are included. Use the student comment analysis governance checklist to agree coverage checks, reviewer access and reporting responsibilities.

Q: When was the guidance published, and which surveys does it affect?

A: It appeared on 3 September 2026 and concerns Online Surveys. It introduces no NSS, PTES, PRES or UKES changes or UK-wide implementation deadline.

Q: Does reading comments in context make student voice representative?

A: No. It helps the reader interpret the responses available, but cannot supply the experiences of students who did not respond. Check participation and the question asked before generalising, and retain accounts that differ from the main themes.

References

[Jisc Online Surveys]: "Survey Summer School, week five: from responses to decisions" Published: 2026-09-03

[Jisc Online Surveys]: "Filtering survey responses" Published: not stated; accessed: 2026-10-02

[Jisc Online Surveys]: "Downloading your responses" Published: not stated; accessed: 2026-10-02