Student satisfaction in the Russell Group and Non-Russell Group Universities in UK

Undeniably, student satisfaction in higher education is one of the important key factors for university ranking and league table. Accordingly, this article describes the student satisfaction data between Russell Group and Non-Russell Group universities in United Kingdom (UK). The data includes 19 Russell Group and 102 Non-Russell Group universities. We present some descriptive statistics of the variables included in the dataset. The results of the article are based on the two-Sample t-Test and CI. The findings from the data suggest that there is no statistically significant difference on student satisfaction rating between Russell Group and Non-Russell Group universities. This study has policy implications for the higher education in the UK.


a b s t r a c t
Undeniably, student satisfaction in higher education is one of the important key factors for university ranking and league table. Accordingly, this article describes the student satisfaction data between Russell Group and Non-Russell Group universities in United Kingdom (UK). The data includes 19 Russell Group and 102 Non-Russell Group universities. We present some descriptive statistics of the variables included in the dataset. The results of the article are based on the two-Sample t-Test and CI. The findings from the data suggest that there is no statistically significant difference on student satisfaction rating between Russell Group and Non-Russell Group universities. This study has policy implications for the higher education in the UK. &

Value of the data
There is lack of research on student satisfaction in the UK and hence this article aimed to find out the correlation of student satisfaction between Russell Group Vs Non-Russell Group Universities.
The data were collected from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), UK. The data can be used to identify the key performance factors associated with UK universities. The article could be useful for further study on the gender voices (student satisfaction) in UK and comparison with other countries.
The data did not present the respondents identity and hence confidentiality and anonymity of the respondents were maintained. The dataset provides an original contribution to the understanding of the student satisfaction in the UK.

Data
Student perception survey is the most common approach to evaluate the quality of universities [1][2][3][4]. This is for quality improvement, in response to the increased international competition for students and operational funds in higher education [5][6][7]. Table 1 presents the sample of the study (n ¼ 121). The study includes 19 Russell Group and 102 Non-Russell Group universities. Importantly, five renowned Russell Group universities were excluded due to the data availability: Cardiff University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, and University of Southampton.
National Student Survey (NSS) is compulsory for final year students on all courses in all higher education institutions in UK. Students respond based on a Likert scale where: 5 -Definitely agree, 4 -Mostly agree, 3 -Neither agree nor disagree, 2 -Mostly disagree, 1 -Definitely disagree. The following areas are covered in the following seven areas. In addition, the students respond to the Students' Union question:  The London School of Economics and Political Science Y 10004063 5 The University of Birmingham Y 10006840 6 The University of Leeds Y 10007795 7 The University of Liverpool Y 10006842 8 The University of Manchester Y 10007798 9 The University of Nottingham Y 10007154 10 The University of Sheffield Y 10007157 11 The

Experimental design, materials and methods
According to the Russell Group, the universities have significant social, economic and cultural impacts nationally and around the globe (https://russellgroup.ac.uk/about/our-universities). For example Russell Group universities produce more than two-thirds of the world-leading research produced in UK universities These universities support more than 300,000 jobs in UK with economic output is more than d32 billion every year.
There were 417,000 undergraduates and 192,500 postgraduates were studying at a Russell Group university in 2015-16. Fig. 1 shows the student satisfaction percentage in 2014 and 2015 based on the NSS Questionnaire survey. Importantly, teaching quality (Q1-4) is the highest satisfaction percentage. But for the assessment and feedback, the students were not satisfied and raised question on the quality of the feedback. In addition, the engagement of student union is not very active for many universities.
To achieve the objective of the study, the study has developed the following hypothesis: Nullhy pothesis : Where, μ 1 is the mean number of student satisfaction of Russell Group; μ 2 is the mean number of student satisfaction of Non-Russell Group Table 2 reports the Descriptive Statistics of the study. It is found that the mean of the Students satisfaction (Russell Group) is 87 comparing to Students satisfaction (Non-Russell Group) with 85.48. The lower standard deviation of the Russell Group means that the data tend to be closer to the mean. Regarding the Estimation for Difference, we are 95% confident that the confidence interval as: À0.318 r μ 1 -μ 2 r 3.357 (Table 3).
We find that t value is 1.70, df is 28 and p 4 .05. This indicates that the null hypothesis is not rejected. Fig. 2 shows the individual Value Plot of Students satisfaction of Russell Group and Non-Russell Group.
Overall, we can conclude that since the null hypothesis is not rejected, the mean of student satisfaction between Russell Group and Non-Russell Group universities are not significantly different.