Abstract
Connections between the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and writing are often framed through the lens of accountability. Recently, Paul Anderson et al. detailed a large-scale study examining the relationship between writing and engagement across multiple institutions, an important perspective in the current assessment and accountability climate. Their study provides a high-level view of what students report learning across multiple disciplines and institutions, and provides evidence for the value of writing and engagement practices in postsecondary settings. George Kuh, one of the creators of NSSE, states "student engagement ... has emerged during the past fifteen years to become one of the most important 'organizing constructs for institutional assessment, accountability, and improvement'" ("Conceptual and Empirical Foundations" 5). In "What is NSSE?," Charles Paine et al. explain NSSE's definition of engagement as "a construct that represents the degree to which (1) students devote time and effort to educationally purposeful activities, and (2) schools, programs, and teachers organize curricula to support and encourage students to devote time and effort to these activities (267). Additionally, Charles Paine details the work of the CWPA/NSSE Consortium, a collaboration which created twenty-seven additional writing-focused questions administered with the regular NSSE survey to establish writing-specific benchmarks comparable across institution types. Addison and McGee note that such data provide "more information on writing instruction in the United States [and] also an understanding of the extent to which engaging in certain types of writing instruction measures up to NSSE's benchmarks" (152). However, all of the NSSE survey questions (including the twenty-seven Consortium items) are self-reported student responses about their connection to and engagement with writing. NSSE results do not reflect actual writing performance. Paine et al. offer valuable suggestions for how WPAs might use NSSE data in their work, but the use only considers writing and engagement data parallel to each other, and never in direct relationship.