Page content
The annual National Student Survey targets final year undergraduates at publicly funded higher education institutions (HEIs) across the UK.
The main purpose of the study is to give future students an insight into the University, including the teaching quality. The results of the survey are made available to the public to assist prospective students decide what and where to study through the Unistats website and also the University's online prospectus. The survey gathers views on the quality of teaching and student experience at the University from those who are leaving. The results are an essential part of the quality assurance framework for higher education and they also provide the University with information to enhance teaching quality as part of our continuous quality enhancement cycle.
In 2025, over 357,000 students from 384 institutions participated in the survey including 72% of Ulster's eligible student cohort.
Survey Information
Internal results are published in the data section.
The questions in the survey focus on issues directly related to quality of teaching and are divided into the following sub-headings:
- Teaching on my course
- Learning Opportunities
- Assessment and Feedback
- Academic Support
- Organisation and Management
- Learning Resources
- Student Voice
- Overall satisfaction
NHS-funded students have an additional six questions relating to their practice placement(s).
Responses to each question are scaled from 1-5 (definitely disagree - definitely agree). Students also have the opportunity to provide both positive and negative comments on their overall experience.
Students are firstly contacted by email inviting them to log on to the survey website to complete the questionnaire. Ipsos MORI, who administer the survey and provide the results to funder-regulators, UCAS and participating institutions, follow up students who do not respond by conducting telephone interviews.
The 2026 NSS will open to final-year students in late January 2026.
The NSS is a multi-method survey conducted by Ipsos MORI and their planned timetable of survey activity will be included here later in the 2025/26 academic year.
Throughout the survey period, staff are encouraged to allocate time in class for students to complete the survey. More information on the NSS is available below:
The Office for Students provides information on their website outlining examples of inappropriate influence and stressing the importance of ensuring survey promotion is neutral. It also outlines the actions that the OfS will take if inappropriate influence is reported.
Links to this document and the OfS procedure for investigating allegations of inappropriate influence are provided below:
The following publication threshold criteria must be met in order for results to be published publicly:
- a minimum of 50% response rate and
- a minimum of 10 respondents.
This threshold applies to institution, JACS Subject and course level data.
To assist with monitoring progress response rate reports are updated weekly during the survey period and will be issued to Programme Directors, School and Faculty Leadership.
Survey results are publicly available in the following ways:
- Published 'in context' on the websites of universities and colleges via a Unistats 'widget'. This is a small graphic with three pieces of information from the Unistats data collection, specifically about the course the user is viewing.
- Published on the Unistats website that enables users to search and compare Unistats data.
- On the UCAS course search tool (Course Finder), which will incorporate the Unistats data so users can view the data at the same time as viewing the courses they are interested in applying to.
