International Student Barometer™ and Student Barometer™
1. What is it?
The International Student Barometer™ (ISB) is:
• An independent and confidential feedback process for education providers, tracking the decision-making, perceptions, expectations and experiences of students studying outside their home country.
• A risk management tool, identifying the key drivers of international student satisfaction and establishing the relative importance of each.
• A comparative measure, tracking year on year how expectations and perceptions change - within your institution and against national and global benchmarks.
The ISB has been adopted by over 160 institutions in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, continental Europe and the USA. It is now the largest study of international students in the world with feedback from over 250,000 students in the last 2 years.
Our partners have since adopted the Student Barometer™ (SB), a parallel study, designed specifically for domestic (home) students.
2. Why do we need the Barometer?
The Barometer provides an objective, independent and confidential feedback loop to:
• Enhance your competitive advantage
• Inform departmental and institutional decision-making
• Adapt student recruitment and marketing to manage expectations
Specific outcomes include:
• Understand and compare students’ expectations and experiences
• Identify key differentiators for marketing – where does our institution out-perform the sector?
• Identify priority areas for investment and support
• Deliver key performance indicators (KPIs) for academic departments and support services
• Educate staff - provide enlightened insights into the motivations, attitudes and perceptions of this year’s cohort
• Measure the success of your institution relative to rivals, win support for change and set realistic goals and objectives for improvement
• Track progress year on year
3. How does it work?
i-graduate manages the whole research process from planning to reporting. All survey design, hosting, data extraction and analysis is conducted for you by our expert analysts.
The Barometers run at two points in the year (Entry and Exit) using a semi-standardised online questionnaire format, adapted and customised for each partner institution.
We use a powerful and comprehensive set of online survey software with advanced survey features, multilingual capabilities and the highest level of data security across the sector.
4. What does the partner fee include?
• Questionnaire design, construction and management
• Data analysis (institutional analysis & comparative benchmarking)
• Presentation of results
• Provision of the raw data
• Country Insight Reports – to inform recruitment strategy
• Invitation to private Best Practice Exchange event (partners only)
• An e-handbook - providing a comprehensive guide to the Barometers
• Marketing materials to support the survey process (downloadable posters, website buttons etc)