UNDERSTANDING THE UNIVERSITY REPORT CARD NAVIGATOR INDICATORS

DATA SOURCES
There are two types of data used to populate the Navigator. The indicators refer to undergraduate student survey data coming from the 2007 UNIVERSITY REPORT CARD (URC) student survey administered by The Strategic Counsel in partnership with the Globe and Mail and the Educational Policy Institute. The survey was managed by studentawards.com. The URC survey was administered from mid-February 2007 until mid-May 2007. There were over 46,000 student responses. Individuals interested in finding out more information about the survey and methods can consult: The Globe and Mail

Each indicator derived from student opinion is a combination of a series of mean scores. Each question used for every indicator is listed in the definitions section.

The second type of data comes from publicly available third parties (fact). These organizations include, but are not limited to: Statistics Canada, The Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Canadian Association of University Business Offices, L'Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST) and the TD Scholarship Trust Foundation.

DATA CONVERSION
All 52 schools included in the University Report Card Navigator have data attributed to each and every indicator. There are some indicators where data is not available for certain institutions. In these cases, those institutions are placed in the bottom (Light Blue) band (see below for an explanation of banding). This was particularly the case with respect to athletics, where a number of institutions do not participate in some or all sports through the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS). Individuals interested in finding out more information about institutional athletic opportunities should consult the institution directly.

Each institution is placed into a “band” of institutions based on its performance in that indicator. These bands are represented visually by three colours: Gold (top band of institutions), Blue (middle band) and Light Blue (bottom band). In principle, each band is meant to contain a third of all institutions. However, this rule was not applied strictly and the number of institutions in each band fluctuates by indicator. This was done in order to ensure that the division between bands was not placed between two institutions whose scores on that indicator made them effectively indistinguishable.

Interested parties in the full methodology should direct email to: epitoronto@gmail.com

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