ABSTRACT
Survey research is a mainstay of writing center scholarship. Over the past decade, writing center researchers have used the method to address major questions in the field, and recent publications have offered an impressive picture of how far our field has come in taking on the requirements of the method. But when it comes to writing center assessment, the picture is quite different. Nearly all writing center directors use (or have used, or will use) surveys to assess students’ satisfaction with their tutoring sessions, but those surveys evince little of the sophistication that characterizes the method in published writing center research. This chapter seeks to bridge that gap by offering an agenda for improving survey methods in both writing center research and assessment. The chapter outlines four methodological challenges that are particular to survey research in writing centers, and it describes how writing center researchers can expand their methodological practices to meet these challenges. The chapter concludes with a proposal for how researchers in the field could use their knowledge of survey methods to support the development of sound methods for assessment.
