Australian Graduate Survey (AGS)

The Australian Graduate Survey (AGS), coordinated by Graduate Careers Australia; is an annual national survey of newly qualified higher education graduates. The AGS is a census in which new graduates from all Australian universities, and a number of higher education colleges, are surveyed approximately four months after they complete the requirements for their awards. CQUniversity issues the survey, with the results being consolidated by Graduate Careers Australia (GCA). GCA analyse the data and provide the Commonwealth government with this data and findings. The responses to these surveys provide valuable information to higher education policy makers, work force planners and researchers, university teachers and administrators, and to current students. They also provide information for prospective students to assist them in making informed course and career decisions, and careers advisers can integrate the survey results into their counselling practices.

The AGS comprises of :

Graduate Destination Survey (GDS)
The Graduate Destination Survey (GDS) collects information about graduate employment outcomes and previous employment, continuing study and work seeking status, work seeking behaviour, past education and key respondent characteristics such as the nature of recent qualifications, age, sex, residency status etc.(reference GCA). Staff can obtain this data from the CQUniversity Management Dashboard.

Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ)
The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) is intended to probe key elements of the university learning process and, in doing so, obtain data on the quality of teaching and courses. The CEQ consists of attitudinal statements, each with a corresponding five-point scale, labelled strongly disagree at one end and strongly agree at the other. Respondents are encouraged to indicate their agreement or disagreement with each item.

With the exception of the Overall Satisfaction Indicator (OSI) which is a single-item scale, each statement in the CEQ has at least two other accompanying items (although not necessarily appearing in consecutive order) and together these constitute a 'scale' which measures an underlying constuct. While there are 'core' scales which appear in the CEQ distributed to graduates from every institution, each institution is also able to choose from a range of additional scales measuring different pedagogical constructs. However, individual statements within a scale are never split up and administered separately. (reference GCA)

Graduate Careers Australia

Graduate Careers Australia (GCA) is the leading authority on graduate employment issues in Australia. GCA is a peak body with representatives from universities and government, as well as graduate recruiters and is the central body coordinating the Australian Graduate Survey (AGS) in association with participating institutions, Universities Australia (UA) and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).