The Wellbeing Improvement Survey for Higher Education Settings (WISHES) is a brief survey, available at no cost, that provides colleges and universities with timely and actionable data to adapt and improve institutional norms, structures, and processes to enable all students to thrive and flourish.
Why Use WISHES?
WISHES is an integral tool for advancing student wellbeing efforts across campus.
WISHES is a complement to existing in-depth health and student experience surveys. It’s short and can be administered multiple times per year to quickly assess student experiences and the campus conditions that impact wellbeing.
WISHES supports higher education institutions to :
- motivate leaders, faculty, administrators, and students to work collaboratively to improve campus systems.
- understand the associations between key student experiences and the impact these have on equitable wellbeing
- build an understanding of the root causes of inequitable wellbeing among historically marginalized groups of students
- shorten cycles of learning to accelerate improvement (i.e. learn as quickly as possible that a change you tried didn’t work as expected)
- understand and address the variation in student wellbeing throughout the year
- respond in (close to) real time to emergent conditions that impact students’ wellbeing
- assess trends over time
- benchmark data with other colleges and universities
Participating colleges and universities:
- have immediate access to their raw data
- choose their own sampling and administration methods
- can add unlimited custom questions at no charge (however, adding too many custom questions will negatively impact response rates).
- receive a password protected dashboard with their institution’s key experience and outcomes metrics graphed over time
- are eligible to participate in the Launch Lab and Pacesetters Action Community
WISHES was developed with funding from Wellfleet Student Health Insurance.
What Does the Survey Measure?
| Conditions for Wellbeing | Intermediate Outcomes | Long-term Outcomes |
|---|---|---|
| Financial security | Loneliness | Flourishing |
| No experiences of discrimination | Belonging | Psychological distress |
| Excited about learning | Mental health treatment engagement | Self-reported overall health and mental health |
| Engagement in extracurricular activities | Binge drinking | Health and academic risk |
| Mentorship | Life evaluation | |
| Supportive friend | ||
| Caring professors |
Cost
The tool is available at no cost.
Enroll Now!
- Complete the Interest Form, and a member of the team will reach out with next steps.
- Colleges and universities will need to sign a data use agreement before receiving the WISHES questions.
- After the data use agreement is signed:
- Your institution will be sent the WISHES questions and an onboarding packet (in approximately two weeks).
- You can begin administering WISHES immediately.
- Your institution will also become eligible to participate in the Launch Lab and Pacesetters Action Community.
Join a Community of Institutions Learning Together to Catalyze Systemic Change using WISHES
WISHES was developed to provide institutions with the data they need to effectively respond to emerging student wellbeing needs and to adapt and improve their institution’s norms, structures, and processes in support of achieving better and more equitable wellbeing. We can no doubt progress faster when working together. Institutions that use WISHES are invited to participate in an exclusive improvement community with other colleges and universities working together to build data infrastructure, through the use of WISHES, and to use data effectively to transform campus systems that enable all students to thrive and flourish.
The key word is ACTION. Embracing an “all teach, all learn, all lead” philosophy, this action-oriented community focuses on working together to create intentional, impactful change, guided by WISHES data, to advance equitable wellbeing.
There are two tracks within this community: the WISHES Launch Lab and the Pacesetter Action Community (PAC). The WISHES Launch lab is a one-semester, cohort-based learning experience that focuses on foundational knowledge and skills. After completing the Launch Lab, institutions that continue to administer WISHES are invited into the Pacesetter Action Community, an ongoing community of changemakers using WISHES data to transform their institution’s norms, structures, and processes to achieve better and more equitable wellbeing for students.
Participation in the Launch Lab and the Pacesetters Action Community is strongly encouraged. Institutions can choose to administer WISHES without joining the learning community.
What Do I Need to Know About Administering WISHES?
Institutions can choose their own sampling and administration methods, and campuses can add unlimited custom questions. You may administer WISHES once or you may use it to collect pulse data frequently over time.
Please consider the following questions, to the best of your ability, about your plan to administer WISHES. You may evolve your methods over time as you learn more about best practices from other teams. There will also be opportunities for consultative support.
- Will the survey be administered electronically, on paper, or over the phone? If electronic adminstration, which platform?
- How long will the survey remain open? Will you send any reminders?
- How do you operationally define the population (e.g., all enrolled students) from which the sample will be pulled?
- How many students will you invite to complete the survey each month? How did you determine this number?
- How will you select students to participate? What, if any, method will you use to prevent repetitive participation?
- How will students be invited to complete the survey?
- Which department and individual(s) will have responsibility for administering the survey?
- How will the data be stored and maintained?