The undergraduate student government’s efforts to repeal
the expected cumulative progress requirement could be impeded due
to the lack of scientific backing for their survey.
The survey is scheduled to take place during the fourth and
fifth weeks of this quarter.
The survey will be used to compile data regarding the
policy’s effects on students of the UCLA College. The ECP
requirement requires students to take a certain number of units per
quarter in order to stay on track for timely graduation.
The Undergraduate Students Association Council hopes the results
will indicate that the requirement is negatively affecting the
student body.
The council has taken a strong stance on the issue and has
publicized its view for several years.
“When we picked this action agenda item, investigating
ECP, it does come from the standpoint that ECP may not be the best
policy for students,” said Tommy Tseng, USAC general
representative.
USAC maintains that while its view of the policy as a council is
negative, it will remain neutral in its outreach efforts.
Eligio Martinez, the Academic Affairs commissioner, does not
expect the council’s publicized viewpoint to affect the
survey’s outcome “because the way that we phrase all of
our outreach is in a way … that every question that would be
asked would be neutral.”
USAC is launching a publicity and education campaign in
conjunction with the On Campus Housing Council to encourage as many
students as possible to participate in the survey, as well as
advertising via e-mail, in-class presentations and on campus.
UCLA statistics Professor Vivian Lew cautioned that the survey
will have a voluntary response bias. “Those who respond will
be more passionate about the issue than the non-responders,”
she said.
Any survey or study that does not randomly sample a sizeable
percentage of a population is likely to inaccurately represent the
actual views of the people.
OCHC’s heavy involvement in publicity for the survey could
result in a disproportionately high percentage of on-campus
residents completing the survey.
While accuracy increases with overall participation, the
majority of on campus housing residents are first- and second-year
students and are less likely than upperclassmen to have been
affected by the ECP requirement. The units per quarter needed to
meet the requirement increases with the number of quarters a
student has in attendance.
“The sample may not be totally random in the strictest
statistical sense, but every student will know about it and in that
sense the survey will be representative,” Tseng said.
In addition to questions of the representativeness of the
survey, Professor Lew also raised concerns over students’
access to the survey.
“Students living on campus will have better access to
computers than lower-income commuting students and yet, it may be
the lower-income commuter who is most likely to be adversely
affected by ECP,” Lew said.
In hopes of eliminating perceived access problems, USAC will
have laptops available at wireless Internet locations such as
Ackerman Union, LuValle Commons and Northern Lights
coffeehouse.
After analyzing the survey results, USAC will have to
convincingly present its argument to the Faculty Executive
Committee, the Undergraduate Council and the Executive Board of the
Academic Senate for the requirement to be repealed.
Anthropology Professor Jeanne Arnold, a member of the Faculty
Executive Committee, said the committee has not yet discussed the
survey or even the issue of the ECP requirement.
It is unknown how much weight they will place on the results, or
how significant the data would have to be for the committee to
reconsider the policy.
USAC also has not determined what criteria they will use to
judge the survey results. “We haven’t really formed a
coherent strategy yet,” Tseng said.
The council has said it plans to wait for the results before
deciding how to analyze them.
The final version of the survey was approved by the
Institutional Review Board on January 18, 2005. The 57-question
survey was determined free of biased, leading or insignificant
questions.
“My job has been to try to help [USAC] word things in a
way that the results that will be produced will be useful,”
said Judith Richlin-Klonsky, principal investigator of the board.
“You try to make sure that it’s clear what’s
being asked about.”
Richlin-Klonsky stressed that the confidentiality and handling
of the data was also a major focus of the review process.
“Because of the subject of this, if information were
mistakenly released that had information about what a student said
about his or her academic status, that’s considered very
sensitive,” she said.
If appeal efforts are successful, USAC members believe that the
ECP requirement could be repealed as early as fourth week of spring
quarter.