RESPONSE RATES AND RESPONSE QUALITY OF ONLINE COURSE SURVEY FOR DEAF COLLEGE STUDENTS: A MIXED-METHOD STUDY

Abstract

The study design investigated how data are collected from deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) college students and how different delivery formats of the online course survey evaluation of total effectiveness affect the response rate results of course evaluation, its psychometric properties, and students’ perceptions of the survey-taking experience. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design was used. In the first phase, the quantitative data is gathered and analyzed. Ninety deaf college students were surveyed (experiment group = 48; control group = 42). The results found that the overall response rate is very low (12.5%). The results also indicated that the experimental group attained a marginally higher response rate (RR = 13.41%) in comparison to the control group (RR = 11.73%). The chi-square test indicates this difference in response rate between the experimental group and control group of deaf college students was not statistically significant (p = 0.573). This result is a relatively low response rate, which is not uncommon for surveys. Next a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed with the data for only the evaluation course subscale (four items). The model fit results indicated that the data aligned very well with the course survey evaluation (CSE) model. I also tested a one-factor model across groups for configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance. All groups demonstrated configural, metric invariance, and scalar invariance, which confirms that the psychometric properties of the online course survey are not vary based on the delivery formats of online survey used to evaluate overall effectiveness. The internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) and McDonald Omega reliability were conducted on the CFA data for the CSE instrument, and the results met the acceptable standards. In the second phase, qualitative data and its analysis were implemented to clarify and explain those statistical results by delving more deeply into the participants' perspectives on their course survey evaluation and their response rates. Eight deaf college students participated. Relevant data were collected by in-depth semi-structured interviews. From the semi-interviews, several themes were identified as follows: (a) more support needs; (b) being authentic in communication; (c) problems with online surveys; and (d) visual quality; (e) recommendations for increasing response rate. Participants believed these themes to be worthy of note in order to increase deaf college students response rates. Finally, several limitations, future research, and impications were reported.