Program Quality Surveys Information

Graduating Student, Preceptor and Faculty surveys were first released based on Standards 2007 in 2007.  The purpose of these surveys was to help member colleges and schools gather data for both continuous program improvement and accountability (accreditation) purposes.  These program quality perception surveys were revised by the AACP Institutional Research and Assessment Committee (IRAC), AACP staff, and ACPE staff in 2024 to reflect the changes in Standards 2025. The first administration of these revised surveys occurred in 2025. These surveys continue to be periodically reviewed by IRAC.

The intent of the surveys is for colleges and schools of pharmacy to use them as both a program assessment tool and to provide data during a self-study and accreditation review.

The three surveys can only be administered through AACP's online centralized survey system. Colleges/schools of pharmacy are not permitted to copy or disseminate the surveys. As of 2025, the Program Quality Surveys are being administered in the AACP Survey System 1.0.

The Graduating Student and Faculty surveys open in March and close at the end of June. The Preceptor survey opens in May and closes at the end of August.

Yes, AACP sends an e-mail to the survey coordinator at each of the colleges/schools when the surveys are available for use. This e-mail includes the names of staff members that have been assigned to administer the survey in previous years. Survey coordinators are given approximately one week to add or delete staff members with access to the administration of the survey before an e-mail with survey instructions is sent to those assigned staff. At least one reminder e-mail of the survey closing date is also sent.

Individual e-mail addresses are required for each person you want to survey. The online survey system creates a unique survey link for each participant, which is used to access the survey. This assures that the participants complete the survey only once. Please include only one e-mail address per individual.

The college/school survey administrator can manually type in each e-mail address or they can upload a list of survey takers into the survey system. The Excel file should include first name, last name, e-mail address, and campus location (optional) as separate fields.  A sample file is available within the online survey system.  We recommend downloading the sample file to use as a template prior to importing your list into the system.

Individual name and e-mail addresses are stored in the system during the administration of these surveys; however, AACP does not contact the individuals nor do we give, share, sell or transfer any individual-specific information to any party other than the college/school of pharmacy that provided the information. 

Each college/school of pharmacy administers the graduating student, preceptor and/or faculty survey. It is the responsibility of the college/school to administer the survey by determining a timeline, opening the survey, sending the invite and reminder emails and closing the survey. Invite and reminder e-mails are not sent by AACP; they are sent through the online survey system for which a valid college/school e-mail address must be provided. The e-mail that participants receive comes from that college/school contact.

Once your e-mail list has been imported into the survey system you can then use the "invite newly added participants" link in order to open the survey and send e-mails to your participants. In the "from" line please include a university e-mail address that survey participants may e-mail with questions regarding the survey.

AACP provides standardized text for the invite and reminder e-mails; however, each school has the ability to change the text as needed.

If only a few e-mails have not been received by your survey participants, please double check the participants' e-mail addresses to make sure the addresses were correctly entered into the system.

If a large number of e-mails are not being received, your college/school's spam filter is most likely blocking the e-mails. Please refer to the following points below:

• Notify the individual who administers your institution's spam filtering/blocking software that your survey invitation e-mail will be received from aacp.org and that it will be coming from the following IP address: 69.72.46.146. Please also inform them of the e-mail address that you used in the "from" line of the message and the date that the messages were sent.
• Please use the "remind" link to resend the invitation e-mails to your participants after your I/T department has the necessary information to white list the e-mails.
• If your I/T department requires additional information, please contact Jamie Taylor

If the survey link does not take your participants directly to the survey please ask them to carefully copy and paste the entire survey link into their web browser.  If a survey taker receives an error message that the survey they are trying to take is no longer available or that the user is not found in the system the survey taker most likely has not copied the full survey link into the address bar of his/her web browser. 

Your college/school's I/T firewall may limit the number of connections that can connect to the survey system at one time. If you are administering the survey in a group setting please check with your I/T department prior to administering the survey regarding the current firewall configurations.

• Graduating Student survey: All students graduating from your Pharm.D. as a first professional degree program should be included.
• Faculty survey: All full-time and/or part-time faculty at your college/school of pharmacy with teaching responsibility for the Pharm.D. as a first professional degree should be included.
• Preceptor survey: All preceptors that have precepted students in the current academic year.

It is estimated that the Graduating Student survey takes 30 minutes to complete. The Faculty and Preceptor surveys take approximately 15-20 minutes.

An optional feature allows the survey administrator to add a link to the end of the AACP surveys requesting that participants answer additional questions relating specifically to the institution. The link will direct them to an online survey instrument developed by your institution using their own online survey tool (e.g. SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics). Please be aware that AACP is unable to link user responses from the AACP surveys with your college/school's online survey tool. 

There are many potential ways to boost the response rates for your surveys. First, make sure that you have planned a timeline in advance of administration that allows for at least two reminder messages to be sent. We recommend beginning survey administration at least four weeks prior to the close of a survey. Second, make sure that the list of survey takers that you upload into the system is as clean and accurate as possible. Consider partnering with other departments on campus to ensure that you have the best contact information, particularly for preceptors. Third, consider representative sampling for the Preceptor surveys so that you can better target individuals with reminders to complete the survey.

When the survey is closed by your institution you will be able to download a summary report and raw data report specific to your college/school. Demographic data for the Faculty survey and gender identity and sexual orientation data for all four surveys are only provided in summary and will not be included in the raw data report. Data reports may be downloaded after closing the survey by using the "download raw data report" and "download summary report" links in the survey portal. Summary reports of all participating schools will be posted on the AACP Web site near the end of July for the Graduating Student and Faculty surveys and the end of September for the Preceptor survey. Peer comparisons consisting of five or more schools will be available within the "Reports" area of the survey system for participating institutions during this same timeframe. 

A user's guide that makes recommendations regarding suggested timing of surveys, data interpretation, peer comparisons and follow-up strategies is available at the top of this page.

For additional questions or comments please contact data@aacp.org

Please email data@aacp.org for questions related to question changes.

Our vendor uses standard password policies as well as insists upon full 2048‐bit SSL for security‐weary systems. Passwords are protected in the database using custom written MD5 one‐way encryption (and unique non‐standard salts). Other sensitive data are stored in the database using custom written two‐way DES encryption with project‐unique keys.

Web traffic and connection to 3rd parties in sensitive systems like MNOHS’ project are forced where possible (reliant on 3rd party) to use HTTPS protocol. The Firewall allows HTTP (if necessary), HTTPS and SMTP (outgoing mail) traffic without the need for an SSH Tunnel. Remote Desktop Connection (RDC), SQL enabled via SSH tunnel. Strict SSH connection source IP policy is in effect.
 

The Program Quality Surveys are provided by AACP with the intent of assessment and evaluation; therefore IRB approval is not necessary. 

However, individual institutions and/or other researchers affiliated with AACP may seek to use data collected from the PQS for research purposes. In the event this happens, researchers will need to seek Institutional Review Board approval.

All data received by both your institution and AACP are de-identified when you submit your survey. Neither your name or your e-mail address will be connected to your responses, and these fields are encrypted for an additional layer of protection.

However, because all responses are shared within the raw data report, it may be possible to infer a respondent based on how they responded to certain questions. If you have any concern regarding the survey, you may choose "Unable to Comment" or leave open-text box questions blank.

For faculty, the entire demographic section is optional. You may submit it blank.