Data intelligence

In 2020/21, there was an error in the census year referred to in the Welsh language version of the Graduate Outcomes survey.

There were just over 3,280 responses received from graduates who had the option to complete the survey in Welsh at these providers. Of these responses, approximately 300 were completed in Welsh. Around two thirds of these Welsh responses were collected via Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) and, following extensive checks of recordings, we could confirm that interviewers corrected the census year at the time of interview. These responses could therefore be confirmed as referring to the correct census year and retained as part of the dataset. The remaining third of these responses were completed online and could not be verified as relating to the correct census year. As a result, due to the data quality concerns, all the online survey responses to the Welsh language version of the survey have been removed from the dataset.

These graduates were not removed from the surveyable population dataset used as a base population to calculate response rates; they will appear as ‘non-respondents’ to the survey.

In 2019/20, an error existed in two of the opt-in research questions for the Welsh language version of the Graduate Outcomes survey (Collaborating with others in different subject and Collaborating with others outside HE research). Whilst the question text was displayed correctly, the selectable answer options displayed blank (empty) boxes. Therefore, graduates who were eligible to answer these questions and chose to complete the survey in Welsh would not have known what answer option they were selecting. This issue affects 5 graduate responses.

The Open University has a significant proportion (99%) of their students with an unknown year of course. The flexible nature of study at The Open University means that the concept of a year of course does not have any meaning and hence almost all taught students are returned as unknown.

In 2017/18, De Montfont University incorrectly reported staff on zero hours contracts, due to a technical issue. 5610 staff were incorrectly reported as being on a zero hours contract. Of these, 3250 were included in the staff contract population at 1 December. All staff at the provider should have been reported as not on a zero hours contract.

In 2017/18, Staffordshire University incorrectly reported 1595 full-person equivalents as being on zero hours contracts. These should have been recorded as not on a zero hours contract. For the same year Staffordshire University incorrectly reported 1265 full-person equivalents as hourly paid. These should have been recorded as salaried.