Marketing students at work: organisation citizenship behaviour training as a tool to minimise survey non-response.

A continuing decline in an institution's response rates for student evaluations of teaching (SET) raised faculty concerns about non-response bias in summary statistics. In response, this institution's SET stakeholders partnered with a Marketing Methods class section to create strategies for increasing response rates. The project was also an exercise in organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) training because students in that class section received intensive training on how SET feedback is valued by instructors and its role in improving their academic organisation. Within the context of OCB theory, this article finds student exposure to OCB training increases SET response rates because knowing how SET benefits their organisation increases unit-level response propensity for member surveys intended to improve their institution. In the year of the OCB training, SET response rates increased by 26%, though the increases did not persist into later academic years. The response rate increases are realised across all demographic groups with disproportionate increases among low response rate groups, including low performing students, men and ethnic minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]