The Students’ Union is an independent charity that exists to advance your education at the University of Portsmouth through a range of exciting services and activities. Our mission is to have a positive impact with every Portsmouth student: Students are heard, students are empowered, students thrive.

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At UPSU's Advice Service, we offer confidential, impartial and non-judgemental support on a range of academic and university issues that may affect your experience. Our team of trained advisers are on hand all year round to offer help where it's needed. The independent service works closely with the University of Portsmouth to resolve issues and ensure students are treated fairly.

UPSU are here to represent every student at the University of Portsmouth. We have many ways you can express your student voice, including: our Course Rep system, Have Your Say, Student Council, StART, Hot Topic, Annual Survey, Focus Groups, and more! Click on the tabs to learn more about each platform regarding Representation! You can also see a summary of our research by clicking on the UPSU Research & Data page.

Student Groups are a great development opportunity and a great place to find new friends, build a community and have a sense of belonging whilst at University!

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Welcome to UPSU

UPSU Research & Data

UPSU Research is carried out by the Insights Team. Our aim is to inform the Students’ Union’s activity through various research methods. We do this by collecting student feedback, analysing and reporting on internal and external data, and monitoring demographic engagement with the SU. We also carry out a lot of desk based research to stay informed on the Higher Education Sector!

We ensure that all student’s SU accounts are up to date by refreshing the system on a monthly basis to make sure it matches up with UoP records.

How to get involved:

There are a lot of ways you can get involved in participating in our research gathering, and you might even get rewarded for doing it! Here are a few ways you can get involved, click the buttons below to find out more about each aspect:

The Team Consists of:

Head of Marketing and Engagement - Anita Butler

Oversees UPSU’s Insights Team and Marketing Team from a strategic point of view. This means Anita is responsible for the ongoing development of the Insights Function. She's also the Head of the UPSU Marketing Team, who work closely with the Insights Team.

Insights Function Manager - Jake Jones

Oversees and develops the Insights function, ensuring that appropriate data is collected to inform the SU’s work. He coordinates and plans insights work, collaborating with other functions of UPSU, and ensures the delivery of the results to relevant people including University of Portsmouth staff to help the student voice be heard.

Insights Specialist - Alfie Redman

Responsible for managing numerous individual projects, alongside assisting Jake and the wider Insights Team with those projects considered more large scale (e.g. Annual Survey, NSS). Also responsible for the management of student staff. He collects and analyses relevant data and writes reports to be shared round the organisation and to UoP staff. He also monitors university data to help inform UPSU’s work.

Insights Assistant - TBC

Our Insights Assistants are part-time student roles! They offer a student perspective first hand and their involvement in the team allows Insights’ data to be interpreted from the point of view of a student. They support the team by collecting and analysing data, writing reports for UPSU and UoP staff, and monitors demographic data to help with the Union’s EDI commitments. Our previous Insights Assistant (Ele) has recently graduated so there are currently no Insights Assistants in the team. This is a part-time student staff role, if you are interested in this role or what other student roles are available at the Union, CLICK HERE. We will be recruiting two new Insights Assistants very soon, so keep an eye on the careers page if you are interested!

Insights aims:

To be transparent - we want you to be confident that your feedback matters! We aim to share survey and focus group results to keep you informed on the student voice. We will create infographics for our research and publish them on our webpages!
To represent your voice - the purpose of us collecting feedback is not only to monitor our own work to ensure the SU is as effective as it can be, but also to influence the University to make changes based on your feedback!
To be accurate and reliable - we aim for all of our surveys to have a 95% confidence level with a 5% margin of error. For focus groups we always aim to have a wide level of representation of as many demographics as possible to gather feedback from a diverse range of students, in accordance with the research. This is to ensure that all students have been considered when it comes to student feedback!
To have data-driven decision making - we want all of our projects to be student led and driven by student data! All our projects and events heavily consider student feedback so it is important to get your voice heard!

How to get in touch with us?

Very easily! If you would like to chat to Insights about your data needs, or simply would like to learn more about our role within UPSU, please email us at insights@upsu.net. If you would like to change anything about your account on the SU website, please email us but be aware that if your details are not changed on the University’s system, your details will be reverted back to what is on the University system when Insights do the monthly refresh.

Ongoing Projects

Democracy Review - ongoing in 2024/25. The aim of this is to review UPSU's democratic structures and design new processes to help us represent you. The Insights team is heavily involved in this project, having rolled out a student survey that helped inform the working group on what students think of the current elected officer roles. You can see the results of the survey HERE.
Personal tutors work - Insights is supporting UoP academics in helping them understand students’ experiences with their personal tutors as a way to improve this service. Insights research has come from Annual Survey analysis (compared with the previous year), alongside focus groups to provide greater context on the data. See the focus group's results HERE, and the Annual Survey section on personal tutors HERE.
SU building student consultation - the Insights team are heavily involved in the development plans of the new Students’ Union building. We have recently gathered feedback from students regarding the University’s Estates Redevelopment Plan which we have reported back to the University for them to implement. Click HERE to see the results!
UPSU Climate Priority - the Insights team is committed to do all we can when it comes to mitigating climate change. We support the UPSU Climate Group by researching students’ views on climate change and best sustainability practices from other organisations in the Higher Education landscape. Click HERE to see some students' opinions regarding climate change and sustainability.
Future Careers - the Insights Team is fundamental in helping develop The Portsmouth Award. We recently gathered feedback about The Portsmouth Award to inform UoP’s Careers and Employability service on how to improve it. Click HERE to see the results.
Student Engagement Dashboard - The Insights Team has assisted UoP on the development of the Student Engagement Dashboard by gathering student feedback on how it can be improved. Find the results HERE.
Lasting Change - The Insights Team has supported the University-wide Lasting Change programme that aims to connect staff and students in a community of learning and sharing. Initially, the programme will be focussed on improving the University experience and academic outcomes for PGM students. Find more about this initiative by clicking HERE. We also led a focus group about PGM students' experiences. Read the results HERE.
UPSU Rebrand - The Insights Team has assisted the Marketing Team in the UPSU Rebrand project. This has included running student focus groups and surveys to gather feedback around what students want to see in the Rebrand! We recently carried out a survey to assist the UPSU Rebrand. Click HERE to see the results.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you ensure the accuracy and reliability of your insights?

We aim for all of our surveys’ sample size to gain at least 95% confidence level with a 5% margin of error, with our current student population being around 30,000, this would mean approximately 380 survey respondents to achieve this confidence rating. We also carry out demographic breakdowns of our surveys to ensure we are capturing a representative voice of our student population.

How do you handle confidential or sensitive information?

Your privacy is extremely important to us and the way we handle your demographic data is strictly confidential. We follow compliances set on our Data Sharing Agreement with the University. For more information see this link - https://upsu.net/your-union/privacy. However, there are some limits to confidentiality: If anything said in the survey leads us to believe that there is a significant risk of harm to you or someone else or something illegal is mentioned we may be obliged to report such information to other relevant authorities.

How do you determine which research method to use for a project?

This is dependent on what the project is. For example, if we want to capture a wide range of opinions from students on a certain topic, a survey may be the best way to do this. However, if we want more detailed information on a topic, where students can be asked to elaborate on their opinions, a focus group or interview may be more appropriate.

What tools and technologies do you use?

Primarily, we use Excel and Google Sheets for data analysis, but we also use NVivo and Qualtrics to help us with going through survey data. All our surveys are designed on Qualtrics.

Page created: Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:15:10 GMT
Page updated: Wed, 11 Sep 2024 15:17:41 GMT

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The University of Portsmouth Students’ Union has a vision of creating a positive impact with every Portsmouth student during their time at University.