C07018 Instructions for use of email text: January 2009

Instructions for use of the covering email relating to the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education record 2007/08 (C07018)

HESA has provided text for the emails to be used with the electronic versions of the DLHE questionnaire. These are available in both English and Welsh. It is intended that institutions should use these as they stand, with only a small number of options:

In one or more places the text refers to the institution - you will need to substitute the correct descriptor, or the actual name of the institution.

In paragraph 1 you may wish to add text to the covering email in order to address particular groups of students; e.g. for students who have continued to study at the same institution:

We are asking everyone, even those who have continued to study at the institution, what they will be doing on 12 January 2009, so that the information is comparable.

In paragraph 2 you should insert either the web-reference to your own locally-hosted online DLHE questionnaire and also indicate where the student can find their HUSID (i.e. at the top of the email), or the web reference to the centrally-hosted online DLHE survey, and if you request the personal identifier as part of the personal details page, then you should indicate where this can be found.

Paragraph 3 is optional; if you choose to include this sentence about alternative methods of accessing the survey, please refer to the ‘Survey accessibility' section of the DLHE Methodology for guidance and insert appropriate text.

In paragraph 4 you should indicate where/how the graduate can access more detail about the survey, and what will happen to the data etc. You may find emailing the entire text provided by HESA is best, or you may wish to attach this information as a separate file. Either way, the graduate must be made aware of this information.

The Data Protection Act 1998 requires data subjects to be informed of what happens to their data within a collection notice. Collection notices about the uses of HESA data are included with the covering emails and are available in both English and Welsh. In addition, an institution needs to include its own wording about the use it makes of the data. HESA strongly recommends that you compose the wording for this section to protect your own legal position.

The final paragraph refers to the careers service, if this is not the correct description of this function for your institution you will need to change it. Also institutions need to add their own description of services available to graduates, as we know that these are very varied.