The Midpoint response rate was 73%, which is very high for surveys such as this, which typically have a telephone interview response rate of 50% or less. Similarly, the Follow-up response rate of 62% was also encouraging, given that thirteen months had elapsed, with changes of address being likely in a student population, which tends to be more mobile.

	Point of Entry	Mid Point	Follow- up
BC Institute of Technology	43	27	25
Camosun College	86	68	51
Capilano College	124	99	88
University College of the Cariboo	269	200	163
College of New Caledonia	120	97	88
College of the Rockies	113	90	77
Douglas College	120	85	74
University College of the Fraser Valley	114	87	77
Kwantlen University College	402	309	267
Malaspina University College	183	134	115
North Island College	164	130	110
Northern Lights College	58	36	36
Northwest Community College	75	52	43
Okanagan University College	289	213	172
Selkirk College	112	69	58
Vancouver Community College	290	187	153
TOTAL	2562	1883	1597

1.3

Limitations

Unlike project A (3 institutions) and B (12 institutions), project C samples the entire population of 16 institutions offering ABE / College Prep within BC that existed at the time of the survey. However there is no certainty that that all the classes within the institutions were surveyed, so that the conclusions reached in this survey cannot be said to absolutely describe ABE / College Prep programs offered by public colleges/ institutions as a whole within BC. There are also subtle reporting biases that creep in, and where possible these have been noted in the text.

The incorporation of a unique numeric identifier in all surveys has substantially minimized the linkage problems that were encountered in the B project. As is discussed in the Data Processing Appendix (§6.1), the numbers in this report differ slightly (less than 1% in general) from those in the summary reports which were sent to the Colleges in the past year. This difference is due to duplicates discovered when the tracking database was used to contact the students in the later surveys.

Because of minor linkage problems and some inconsistencies between survey records for individual students. the totals vary slightly from section to section. A related issue is that totals also vary within some sections and subsections, since students did not always answer all applicable questions. This later comment applies particularly to the Point of Entry survey, where there was no control over question skip patterns.