Supporting physics teaching with research-based resources

The questions on the URSSA were based on longitudinal interviews of 76 students about the benefits and learning gains they experienced through undergraduate research activities. A sample of 80 faculty were also interviewed about working with the undergraduate research students. Using the interview findings, the developers created a survey blueprint, wrote items and reviewed the survey with their advisory board. The survey was them piloted with students using think around interviews, and revised. The underlying structure of the survey was assessed with confirmatory factor analysis and the developers found the four components of the survey represent separate but related constructs. Average scores from item blocks formed reliable but moderate to highly correlated composite measures. Additionally, some questions about student learning gains (meant to assess individual learning) correlated to ratings of satisfaction with external aspects of the research experience. The pattern of correlation among individual items suggests that items asking students to rate external aspects of their environment were more like satisfaction ratings than items that directly ask about student skills attainment. Finally, survey items asking about student aspirations to attend graduate school in science reflected inflated estimates of the proportions of students who had actually decided on graduate education after their UR experiences. As of May 1, 2014, 3671 students had taken the URSSA across the United States and Canada. The URSSA results are published in eight peer-reviewed publications.