Analysis of preliminary 2020 data collected as of May 1 was conducted in response to concerns about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted operations at nearly all participating institutions. While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted operations at nearly every institution, as of March 18, 96% of NSSE 2020 institutions had already launched the survey and 92% had sent all but one or two of their scheduled reminder messages.

We addressed three broad questions: (a) Did the pandemic change response rates or the types of students who responded to the survey, (b) did the trend of responses change after disruptions to campus operations, and (c) do post-covid Engagement Indicators differ from pre-covid responses? Results show generally trivial effects on response rates and responses to engagement items.