Exploring the DNA of the University of Bremen
Next year, the University of Bremen celebrates its 50th anniversary. What type of identity do graduates of the university have concerning their alma mater? How has the university’s image changed over the years among students and in public? The alumni association would like to start a comprehensive survey in collaboration with the Social Sciences in Department 8 and its affiliated Methods Center under the supervision of Prof. Uwe Engel, whom we have already interviewed in advance.
Professor Engel, how will your Methods Center support this survey?
First of all, the Methods Center will help to transfer the content-related ideas on the topic into a survey for an online interview. Subsequently, it will carry out the survey and help with the analysis of the data. This project is also monitored within a master thesis of one of our students.
How will data protection laws be observed?
First and foremost, by the fact that the invitation email to participate in the survey will be sent out by the alumni association itself, which will contain the link to the survey. Additionally, participation is voluntary in this survey; all entries will be used in an anonymous form and exclusively for scientific purposes and will not be disclosed to third parties.
The alumni association wants to write to approximately 8,000 alumni and invite them to participate in the survey. What return do you expect, and how meaningful can the results be?
The number of respondents is difficult to estimate. The topic of the survey plays a role in that. With a little bit of luck, the members of the alumni association are interested in the topic and therefore want to participate. An interesting and maybe also surprising presentation of the online interview could help as well. The meaningfulness of the results will be all the greater the more members participate in the survey.
On what topics can this survey present new findings?
I believe that this study is the first one that focuses on the image of the University of Bremen. New findings are therefore guaranteed.
Do you anticipate anything unexpected, any surprises?
I can imagine that the reflection of the survey results will produce a distinguished image of the University of Bremen.