What is the Thriving Quotient?

The instrument Dr. Schreiner built to measure student thriving, which she defines as "an expanded vision for student success that incorporates students' intellectual, interpersonal, and psychological engagement and well-being while in college." It reports five scales across those three areas - Engaged Learning, Academic Determination, Social Connectedness, Diverse Citizenship and Positive Perspective - from a twenty-four item questionnaire. Every factor it measures is open to change, so a score points at something a campus can act on. The questionnaire is called a Thriving Instrument, and there are seven, one for each campus population: undergraduates, second-year students, adult learners, graduate students, community college students, faculty and staff.

What is The Thriving Project?

The Thriving Project is the research programme through which the Thriving Quotient instruments are published and administered to campuses. Dr. Laurie A. Schreiner is its principal investigator and the author of the instruments.

What evidence is there that the Thriving Quotient works?

The model has been tested with specific campus populations in peer-reviewed publications, conference papers and doctoral dissertations. Each instrument publishes its own reliability coefficients on its page, and the full body of work is listed in the Thriving Knowledge Center, so a research office can check the instrument before a campus buys it.

How does a campus get started?

Choose the instrument that matches the population you want to survey, then order a survey package for it. A campus surveying more than one population orders one package per population.

01 — The Holistic View of Student Success

What does it mean to thrive in college?

Q: Who created the Thriving Quotient?

Dr. Laurie A. Schreiner, Professor Emerita of Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University, who spent 45 years in higher education as a psychology professor and associate academic dean after receiving her PhD in Psychology from the University of Tennessee. She is co-author of The Student Satisfaction Inventory, used on over 1,600 campuses across the US and Canada.

Thriving is an expanded vision for student success that incorporates students' intellectual, interpersonal, and psychological engagement and well-being while in college. Emerging from the intersection of research in positive psychology on flourishing (Keyes & Haidt, 2003) and Bean and Eaton's (2000) psychological model of student retention, thriving takes a holistic view of students and their college experience.

Each of these aspects of thriving are amenable to change through campus interventions.

Thriving is measured by Dr. Schreiner's Thriving Quotient.

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The research behind it Order the Thriving Package

02 — The Thriving Quotient

How is thriving measured?

The Thriving Quotient is the instrument Dr. Schreiner built to put a number on all three parts of that definition. It reports five scales: Engaged Learning and Academic Determination for the intellectual side, Social Connectedness and Diverse Citizenship for the interpersonal, and Positive Perspective for the psychological.

Students answer twenty-four items. Every scale reports separately, and because each factor it measures is open to change, a score points at something a campus can act on rather than something it can only observe.

The questionnaire itself is called a Thriving Instrument, and there are seven of them — one for each population on campus, built on the same scales so results can be read side by side.

See the seven instruments

03 — The Researcher

Who created the Thriving Quotient?

Dr. Laurie Schreiner is Professor Emerita of Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University in southern California, having spent 45 years in higher education as a psychology professor and associate academic dean after receiving her PhD in Psychology from the University of Tennessee. Co-author of The Student Satisfaction Inventory that is used on over 1,600 campuses across the US and Canada, she has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on thriving, positive psychology, engaged learning, sophomore success, faculty development, and advising.

45Years in higher education

7Instruments

About Dr. Schreiner

04 — The Instruments

Which Thriving instrument fits my campus?

Validated instruments for every population on campus, all administered the same way and priced the same. Choose by who you are surveying.

05 — The Evidence

What has decades of research shown?

The Thriving Quotient rests on peer-reviewed publications, conference papers and doctoral dissertations that tested the model with specific populations. It is all in the Thriving Knowledge Center, so a research office can check the instrument before a campus buys it.