The EICAA Pilot Round implementation within the University of Szeged

Recruiting university students to fill in a questionnaire is often a challenge, mainly for the following reasons:

1. Time constraints: University students often have packed schedules with classes, assignments, part-time jobs, extracurricular activities, and social commitments. Finding the time to complete a survey can be difficult, especially if it is lengthy (and to be honest EICAA students survey is considered rather that in this category) or requires concentrated effort (also true to our survey).

2. Survey fatigue: As mentioned above, university students are frequently approached to participate in various research studies, surveys, or data collection efforts. It is also quite common nowadays that they collect respondents for their own research (for their thesis) by asking their classmates. Over time, this can lead to survey fatigue, where students become less willing to participate due to feeling overwhelmed or having participated in similar surveys before.

3. Lack of incentive: If there is no clear incentive or benefit for students to complete the self-assessment, they may be less motivated to participate. Students are more likely to engage in a survey if they perceive it as valuable, relevant, or if there is a tangible reward involved.

4. Limited awareness or communication: If we only throw in a survey to the mailing list or upload it to the university online platform (that is Neptun in our case), students may not be aware of the survey or the importance of their participation. If the survey recruitment process fails to effectively reach students through appropriate communication channels or lacks clear messaging, it becomes challenging to engage them in the survey.

The instructors of the University of Szeged chose first-year students as the main target group in EICAA, as survey fatigue is mainly a characteristic of upper-class students.

The instructor explained in detail how to fill in the EICAA questionnaire, presented the underlying project and emphasized that this is an important project for the University of Szeged.

We took a step-by-step approach to tackle all the above-mentioned critical aspects during our data collection.

1. Time constraints: The active period for students is typically the first third of term time, when registration for classes has closed but mid-term exams have not yet started, therefore they have capacity for extra activities. The EICAA data collection in Fall 2022 was timed to occur in the 4th-7th week of the school term, when undergraduates typically have the most time.

2. Survey fatigue: Survey fatigue is mainly a characteristic of upper-class students who have participated in many surveys over the years. For juniors, and especially for first-year students, taking part in a survey is a novelty and an interesting adventure. This is why we chose first-year students as our main target group in EICAA.

3. Lack of incentive: At first glance, it seems an easy task to give students an incentive, since we should give them extra points or a better grade for completing the questionnaire. However, there are several problems with this: on the one hand, it raises quality assurance problems for education if the assessment of a course is based on the completion of a questionnaire (and not on learning). On the other hand, it is difficult to give extra credit for an anonymous questionnaire (since we do not know who is entitled to extra credit). In the case of the EICAA questionnaire, we bridged this by telling students in a large lecture that we expect a collaborative effort from them, i.e. that the collaborative result will count. We specified that if at least

400 completions were received, they would have to choose from only 5 rather than 6 answer choices for the end-of-year test (this statistically significantly increases the chances of getting a good grade). And if we reach 500, they will only have to choose from 4 answer choices for the end-of-year test.

4. Limited awareness or communication: The instructor explained in detail how to fill in the EICAA questionnaire, presented the underlying project and emphasized that this is an important project for the University of Szeged. At the same time, he took personal responsibility for the project, i.e. he put his face to the research.