This series of reports presents findings from the 1998 Entering First-Year Student Survey at NC State. Since 1972, Entering Students have been surveyed each year during the New Student Orientation sessions conducted in June and August. Students entering into all 11 undergraduate academic units, including the Agricultural Institute and the First-Year College, are included. Part of this survey contributes to the University of North Carolina General Administration's (UNC-GA) system-wide efforts to evaluate institutional performance.

This introductory report describes the survey's methodology, and provides a demographic profile of survey respondents in comparison to the Fall 1998 First Year class. Specifically, it compares gender, race/ethnicity, and academic unit of survey respondents with the Fall 1998 first-year student population, and presents academic preparation statistics for first-year students. This report is followed by an overview of all students who participated in the First Year Survey. Summary statistics are presented for each survey topic, including student background characteristics, the application process, educational intent and interests, and goals for undergraduate education. Subsequent reports focus on each individual survey topic, and provide gender and racial/ethnic comparisons as well as comparisons between colleges.

Survey Methods

Respondents
A total of 3,321 first-year students attended these orientation sessions and returned completed surveys. Of this total, 3,240 surveys, which represents 85.5 percent of the 3,783 first-year students who were still enrolled in classes 10 days into the fall 1998 semester, were usable for this report. As described below, there are no significant differences between respondents and the first year class with respect to gender, race/ethnicity, or college.

Analyses
Because the response rate is very high (85.5%) and the number of respondents is large (3,783), the margin of error for these results is very low -- under one percent (.27%) at a 95 percent confidence interval. That is, if 26.3 percent of the respondents say they were 'very certain' of their college major, we can be 95 percent sure that the true figure would be between 26.03 percent (26.3 - .27) and 26.57 percent (26.3 + .27) if all first-year students had responded to the survey. The margin of error increases as the sample size decreases, so statements for various subgroups, such as the separate figures reported for whites and African Americans, are less precise than statements based on the total sample. However, given the high response rate (e.g., 345 of 444 African Americans responded to the survey), the margin of error even for small subgroups is close to ⁺1.0 percent at the 95 percent confidence interval.

The data obtained from the first-year orientation sessions were analyzed using standard statistical methods. In analyses not presented in these reports, responses were tested to determine whether there were significant differences between women and men, between white, African American, and other minority students, and between the different colleges. Questions requiring categorical responses were analyzed with chi-square tests, and questions with numerically coded responses were analyzed with either T-tests or one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Duncan�s multiple comparison procedure.

These reports attempt to provide a level of detail that makes the data more accessible and interpretable to the novice data user. A primary purpose is to highlight patterns found in responses to related question items or between comparison groups. Such consistencies among items or between groups are usually more important for understanding the data than are the sizes of the differences between individual pairs of ratings or ranks or, to some extent, whether the differences are statistically significant. While some individual small differences might actually be statistically significant, they may not be substantively meaningful. On the other hand, when even relatively small differences yield consistent patterns within a similar series of questions, the results are potentially more telling.

Demographics of the First-Year Class and Survey Respondents

Gender and Race/Ethnicity (Table 2-1)
There are no significant gender or racial/ethnicity differences between the first-year students actually enrolled at NC State and those in the survey population. Women make up about 40 percent of the first-year student population, compared to 41.4 percent of the survey respondents. White students make up 81.3 percent of the first-year student population, 11.7 percent are African American, and 7.0% are other minorities. Among survey respondents, 82.6 percent are white, 10.6 percent African American, and 6.7 percent other minorities.