Terms of Reference
CBIE, as a member-serving organization, coordinates the surveys and shares the data with participating institutions. In turn, institutions can generate insights to understand the experience of international students and alumni. The benchmarking reports allow institutions to compare their performance to similar institutions across Canada and the national average. Participating institutions contribute to building a robust longitudinal national dataset that can inform policy at provincial, territorial and federal levels.
CBIE Responsibilities
- Manage the development, implementation, reporting and evaluation of the surveys.
- Provide the surveys’ terms of reference to participating institutions.
- Provide a promotional toolkit to participating institutions, which includes targeted communications to encourage students and alumni to complete the surveys.
- Assist institutions with their internal review processes, which may include an ethics review or other relevant internal due diligence.
- Respond to student and alumni queries about the surveys.
- Collect, clean, analyze and present the survey data.
- Circulate the anonymized institution-specific and national datasets and reports to all participating institutions.
- Publish the national results, recognizing participating institutions as contributors to benefit the Canadian international education sector.
Institutional Responsibilities
- Complete and submit the participation agreement.
- Read through the surveys’ terms of reference.
- Conduct an internal survey review through an ethics review or other relevant internal due diligence, as required by the institution.
- Launch the online survey(s) with the custom link provided by CBIE.
- Promote the survey(s) via emails and social media, encouraging student participation.
Ethical Review
CBIE
CBIE receives ethical approval for the administration of its national surveys from the Community Research Ethics Office (CREO). CREO is a Research Ethics Board (REB) that services Canadian not-for-profit organizations, governments, independent consultants, community organizations, community researchers, and others that want to maximize the ethical conduct of their research. CREO’s work aligns with the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS 2, 2018). The ethics approval letter and other supporting documents will be provided to institutions that have completed the participation agreement and are registered to join this surveying initiative.
Participating Institutions
Many institutions have research ethics boards (REB) that assess research involving human subjects. REBs ensure compliance with ethical standards and protect the dignity, rights and welfare of research participants. Review your institution’s ethics approval procedure. If an internal ethical review is required to complete this project at your institution, we highly recommend beginning this process as soon as possible to ensure the survey can be launched at the beginning of October 2027.
Communications with Students
The International Student Survey (ISS) is designed to study international students’ experiences in Canada. Therefore, only students enrolled in post-secondary institutions studying for their full degree/diploma in Canada are invited to complete the survey. This includes international students studying in Canada with a student study permit, visitor’s visa, or undertaking research on a work permit. International exchange students are not be included in this survey sample.
The International Alumni Survey (IAS) explores the post-graduation experiences of international students who studied in Canada. The community of focus for IAS are international alumni who have obtained a full degree/diploma/certificate program in participating Canadian post-secondary institutions. This includes all international alumni, who have graduated from a Canadian institution regardless of their geographical location at the time of the survey. They should have graduated in the period 2019-2027 (inclusively).
CBIE provides each institution with customized surveys links. Participating institutions must add this custom link to the suggested emails and social media posts, templated by CBIE, to promote the survey to their respective international students and international alumni (if applicable), per the suggested communication timeline.
Institutions can modify the surveys invitation and reminders to suit their branding and ethics requirements (i.e., institutional logo, electronic signature, institution-specific ethics statement, etc.). These features may help students understand that the surveys are genuine; however, some students’ email programs may not properly display embedded graphics, rich text, or HTML formatting. Institutions are responsible for ensuring that the emails are formatted so that they will pass the spam filters of your institution. The promotional toolkit and other supporting documents will be provided to institutions that have completed the participation agreement and are registered to join this surveying initiative.
Survey Draw and Prizes
To encourage students to participate in the survey, CBIE will be offering prizes (prizes to be confirmed later). Winners will be randomly selected from the pool of international students who complete the survey. To be eligible, students must complete the survey, agree to participate in the draw and give permission to CBIE to contact them if they are one of the winners. CBIE will communicate directly with the winners via email to award the prizes. If students agree to share the news with their institution, we will do so via our contact at your institution.
Institutions can further incentivize the survey specifically for their respective student population. In this instance, institutions must notify their students accordingly via their communications, select the winners and coordinate the prize logistics. At the end of the questionnaire, respondents will be asked if they want to add their email to the draw for a chance to win an institutional prize. Upon closure of the survey, the email addresses of students who have consented to be contacted will be shared with the institutional representative.
Email addresses will not be associated with any of the data provided in the questionnaire.
Informed Consent
Participating respondents agree to complete the survey to provide anonymized data to support this national research initiative. CBIE will retain the data for 25 years and use it for longitudinal studies.
Respondents may withdraw from the survey at any time by closing their browser. Incomplete questionnaires will not be included in the anonymized dataset. Participants can request the removal of their data before December 1st, 2027 by sending their request to [email protected].
A copy of the online consent form is available here.
Data Security
CBIE uses the professional Alchemer business account to collect participant data. The web-based method is designed to accommodate a large sample.
Alchemer offers Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, which works through a cryptographic system to ensure a secure connection between the client (respondent) and the server (where the responses are saved). SSL is commonly used for online banking sites to transmit secured information. A link with SSL encryption shows the ‘s’ in the ‘HTTP’ address.
Finally, Alchemer complies with Canadian privacy (all data resides on Canadian servers) and accessibility standards (W3C).