ABSTRACT
Despite extensive research, the student engagement concept eludes an agreed definition, the notable absence of the student voice in the literature contributing to the lack of conceptual clarity. This chapter presents the results of the analysis of almost 200,000 open-ended comments submitted by students across seven years (2013–2019) of the Irish Survey of Student Engagement. Students in all publicly funded higher education institutions complete this annual mandatory survey, and while the quantitative questions are analysed centrally and results published nationally, prior to this study, no national analysis of the student comments had been conducted. The systematic analysis of the mini-narratives unmuted the student voice explicating the how and why of engagement in Irish higher education nationally. The use of mixed methods framed by critical realism allowed multiple and dissonant voices to be heard and causality explained. Leximancer, a latent semantic analysis software, enabled a cost-effective, efficient and credible means of analysing the student comments. Correlating the results of the automated analysis with the researcher’s qualitative interpretation confirmed and enhanced the trustworthiness of the findings.
