Thematic analysis – Internal quality assurance and development by accreditation agencies: Which methods are effective for gathering and using feedback?

Summary
The Swiss Agency of Accreditation and Quality Assurance (AAQ) has collected feedback on its work ever since it was set up. This allows the agency to continuously improve its procedures and internal processes. It is an important instrument in terms of internal quality assurance and development at the AAQ. The way in which feedback is gathered and used is guided by successful practices applied in other agencies and is thus based on cooperation between agencies in Europe.

This report reviews the use of internal and external feedback at the AAQ in order to assess and rank the possibilities of applying new methods to the collection and use of feedback. To this end, the report answers the questions of (1) how the collection of feedback is communicated, (2) how the findings are used and (3) what effect the use of feedback is seen to have. The report starts with a brief presentation of the agency and the AAQ quality principles before describing the use of internal and external feedback

A discussion of the findings showed that it was not possible to retrace the use of different feedback in every case. It was nevertheless possible to assess the effect of feedback. It was concluded that greater use could be made of finding and applying methods for the direct collection and use of feedback. However, the actual use of questionnaires on completion of procedures needs to be examined.

Report Interne Qualitätssicherung und -entwicklung von Akkreditierungsagenturen (de)

 

29.07.2020