Desiging the Pathways of Engineering Alumni Research Survey (PEARS)

Surveys of engineering alumni are a common approach taken by departments to collect evidence demonstrating how educational objectives are being met for the purpose of continuous improvement of the program (ABET Criterion 4). While survey administration tools have become widely available and easy to navigate, researchers must still address the challenges of designing not only a concise survey instrument but also an effective deployment plan that results in a high response rate among targeted respondents. To explore these issues in a real world context, this paper draws upon first hand experiences related to the planning of the Pathways of Engineering Alumni Research Survey (PEARS) which was piloted with geographically distributed engineering alumni from four institutions in fall 2011. Creating the PEARS deployment plan paralleled the design of the instrument itself. This paper speaks to the unique logistical considerations of deploying an alumni survey with respect to subject recruitment, incentives, alumni association partnerships, and scalability. The preliminary findings outlined here are intended to inform the redesign of the deployment plan for future administrations of PEARS as well as to serve as a practical resource for other researchers wishing to survey engineering alumni.