The Changing Face of Undergraduate Assessment in UK Sociology

This paper reports on a project following up previous work about patterns of and attitudes to assessment among sociologists. Two forms of data collection were undertaken: an online questionnaire to sociology departments and a series of focus groups with undergraduate students. The results showed that assessment has become a more salient issue than ten years ago, but that most of the innovations in practice had taken place in post-1992 institutions. The focus group findings confirm those from national satisfaction surveys; namely that student dissatisfaction with assessment is profound and that it persists throughout their undergraduate experience.