Student participation is an important and essential part of life at universities and society in general. However, not all students experience it in the same way. This survey explores the participation of international students at German universities.

We want to better understand how international students participate in university life, both online and in person. We are also interested in what changes they would like to see and what barriers they face.

Our survey is adressed at international students who are currently enrolled at a German university. It does not matter whether you are studying in Germany for one semester as an exchange student or have come here to complete your entire degree.

The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. Taking part is voluntary and anonymous, and you can stop at any time without giving a reason. We will not collect any personal data that could be used to identify you.

The survey is being conducted by students as part of the DigitalChangeMaker initiative of the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung.

If you have any technical or content-related questions, please contact:
lea.bachus@stifterverband.de

Privacy Notice

As part of the survey “Participation of International Students,” the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft e.V. collects personal data from students using a standardised online questionnaire. Participation in the survey is voluntary.

The survey is conducted using the survey software SoSci Survey. For this purpose, the Stifterverband uses the services of SoSci Survey GmbH, Erchanbertstraße 6, 81929 Munich. A data processing agreement pursuant to Article 28 DSGVO is in place with SoSci Survey. The data collected are stored on servers in Germany.

The data collected are processed exclusively for conducting the survey and for its scientific and statistical analysis. To support the analysis, the Stifterverband uses an internal AI-assisted analysis tool (“svAutoEDA”). The tool is used exclusively to automatically summarise, thematically structure and linguistically prepare survey results, and to analyse open-ended responses.

Large language models are used for this purpose via the OpenAI API platform. Only the data required for the relevant analysis are transmitted to OpenAI. Where possible, the data are anonymised or pseudonymised before AI-assisted analysis. Processing data that directly identify individuals, such as names or email addresses, is not intended. A data processing agreement pursuant to Article 28 DSGVO is in place with OpenAI. Under the contractual arrangements, content processed via the API is generally not used by OpenAI to train or improve its AI models.

Before any results are published or shared, the datasets are fully anonymised so that it is not possible to draw conclusions about individual persons.