Annual Data Report

There are a number of reasons for why your program should complete the Annual Data Report.  Doing so will allow your program to:          - be included in NASPAA's School Search available to prospective students         - have a NASPAA School Profile highlighting your program(s)         - be included in aggregate analysis of the state of public affairs education

NASPAA uses the data to feed directly in to our School Search and School Profiles as well as to provide valuable insights to our members about the state of public affairs education.  The aggregate analysis of the data is provided at each NASPAA Annual Conference and made available to members throughout the year.

The Annual Data Report contains both the Accreditation Maintenance Report required of all accredited programs and the additional annual data NASPAA collects from all programs.  All accredited members must complete the Accreditation Maintenance Report section of the Annual Data Report to maintain their accreditation status.  The Accreditation Maintenance Report is the top section of the report for accredited programs.

The Annual Data Report contains additional questions to the Accreditation Maintenance Report (without overlapping).  While it is important for programs to complete the entire data report only the first (Accreditation Maintenance Report Section) is required to maintain accreditation.

Schools in the current accreditation cycle (submitting their Self Study in August 15 of that year) can skip the first section (Accreditation Maintenance Report) of the Annual Data Report.  However, in order for the program to show up in the School Search and have a fully populated School Profile the program still needs to complete the short form of the Annual Program Survey section.   The Accreditation Maintenance Report section can be hidden to easily see where the Annual Program Survey questions start.

Membership level data should be provided in the aggregate for schools that have multiple programs.  This was to allow programs to report on all faculty for their institution without having to break them up by degree as in some cases faculty may overlap multiple degree programs.  Schools with multiple degrees will enter the Membership level data once for their first program only.  For their remaining programs you may skip the membership level data questions and go straight to the program level section.

Questions contained in the short form of the survey are those that are used to populate NASPAA's School Search and your School profile.  These are the most important data questions to complete.  The long form data is important for aggregate analysis of the state of the field, but are not included in the school search or profile.

Each Fall programs are asked to complete the Annual Data Report for the previous Academic Year.  For example from August 1 to October 31 2018 schools were providing data for Academic Year 2017-2018.  The Annual Data Report asks programs to indicate how their institution defines its Academic Year (preceding or trailing Summer). 

There is one set of questions that do not follow this norm.  The Data Committee and other constituents in NASPAA felt it was important to have current enrollment numbers.  Therefore, all questions regarding enrollment refer to the Fall for which the program is entering the data (per the example Fall 2018.

Specifically those questions are:

What is the total number of new students entering the program in the fall?  What is the total number of students currently enrolled in the program?

Of the total number of students currently enrolled, what is the percentage of   a. Out-of-state students: %   b. International students: %   c. Female students: %   d. Part-time students: %   e. Persons of diversity (Please do not include int'l students in this category) %

Tuition data refers to the TOTAL AMOUNT it would cost a student attending FULL TIME to receive the degree. Therefore if your program cost $5,000 a semester for a FT student and is a two year program the total cost of the tuition you would enter in the survey is $20,000.  We understand your tuition may change year to year but we are attempting to give students a general idea of the total cost of the degree to them at a given point in time.