The survey was administered to 73% of students studying the six courses listed below
(no student can be asked to take part in more than two research projects in a given
year,and hence are excluded if they have already been sampled in other surveys).
These were all Open University courses and the students were all resident in the UK.
421 students responded out of the 1209 surveyed, giving a response rate of 34.8%. Of
those that answered the question, 239 indicated female, 181 indicated male, age
ranged between 19 and 59 with a mean of 37.62 and a standard deviation of 8.97.
Online surveys have widely varying response rates, but of 161 surveys at the OU in
2009, 17% had a response rate of 50% or higher, while the majority were well below
this and some below 20%