Graduate and Employer Surveys: From Send Date to Outcomes Evidence

Retention has a dashboard; credentialing results arrive from the testing agency in a spreadsheet. But the two outcome measures your standards name by title — graduate satisfaction and employer satisfaction — have no upstream system. They exist only if you build them: an instrument, a send date, a reminder system, and a file where the results land. That build is what this post is about: what the CAAHEP system actually requires, how two Committees on Accreditation (CoAs) have published their expectations in unusual detail, and what to record so the results hold up as outcomes evidence.

Start with the standard itself. In the CAAHEP Standards and Guidelines for the Emergency Medical Services professions, the ones CoAEMSP — the EMS committee — applies, Standard IV.B.1 is explicit: "Outcomes assessments must include but are not limited to national or state credentialing examination(s) performance, programmatic retention, graduate satisfaction, employer satisfaction, and placement in full or part-time employment or volunteering in the profession or in a related profession." [3] Graduate satisfaction and employer satisfaction are the two items on that list that exist only as surveys. How you run them is therefore not a program-improvement nicety — it is accreditation evidence.

The Standards Name the Surveys; Your CoA Defines the Rest

CAAHEP's own process page sets the frame: each CoA works directly with programs, the self-study "documents how the program meets each of the Standards as outlined in the Standards and Guidelines document for the applicable profession," and ongoing quality review runs on "annual report and progress reports" [1]. Two CAAHEP-level obligations touch the surveys directly. Outcomes must be public — CAAHEP provides "a URL link to the web page where each program's outcomes are posted," in accordance with its recognizing body, which expects public access to information on "student achievement" [2]. (The EMS standards' public-summary requirement, V.A.4, covers credentialing, retention, and placement results — the survey results are not on that list [3].) And site visits include "meetings with students, graduates, faculty, administration, and advisory committee members" [1] — the survey population is literally part of the review process.

The operational details — timing, instrument, scope, disposition of results — are set by each CoA. Two have published unusually detailed guidance. CoAEMSP keeps a dedicated FAQ on graduate and employer surveys in its Resource Library [4]. CoARC, the respiratory care committee, describes the surveys on its annual reporting tool page: administered to employed graduates and "employers of all program graduates six (6) to twelve (12) months after graduation," with both surveys "to be used when completing the Annual Report" [7]. (The same page notes that the degree-advancement employer survey is no longer required as of 2026.) If your CoA hasn't published this level of detail, these are a reasonable template for what a reviewer expects.

When to Send Them, and Who to Send Them To

The timing rule is consistent across both: six to twelve months after program completion. CoAEMSP's FAQ adds the qualifier that matters — the graduate "should be employed, or volunteering, in a professional capacity that uses the skills, knowledge, and abilities obtained in the educational program" [4]. The window is long enough that the graduate has real field experience to report on, and short enough that their memory of the program is still specific.

The scope rule is stricter than most coordinators expect: everyone. "Surveys are distributed to all graduates and employers. Track the surveys sent and returned," the FAQ says, and it recommends "a reminder or tickler system for individuals who have not returned the survey" [4]. It also suggests distributing employer surveys at Advisory Committee meetings — a committee the standards require to meet annually [3].

One counterintuitive rule: don't use the graduate survey to find out where graduates are working. CoAEMSP's placement FAQ calls the graduate survey "the least effective method to determine employment" and recommends capturing employment information before students leave the program [6]; an optional Graduate Employment Verification Form in the Resource Library helps with tracking [4]. CoARC publishes a sample consent form for releasing employer survey information specifically to improve employer survey return rates [7]. You need to know the employer before the survey goes out, not after.

What the Surveys Should Ask

CoAEMSP's instrument evaluates competence in each of the three learning domains — cognitive, psychomotor, and affective [4] — the same three domains the standards use elsewhere, including in the definition of placement, which counts work in a related field where the graduate is using "cognitive, psychomotor, and affective competencies acquired in the educational program" [3]. The response options are successful/competent, marginal, unsuccessful, or not applicable — and a marginal or unsuccessful rating triggers follow-up prompts: safety, patient assessment and history, documentation, pharmacology, medical emergencies, trauma, operations, special considerations, an introductory category, and an open "other" [4].

Programs may extend the instrument, but only upward: "Programs may add additional and more in-depth questions to their survey and must use at least the items required by CoAEMSP" [4]. And the end-of-course survey doesn't count as the graduate survey — it captures valuable information and has a different focus [4]. The employer survey runs in parallel; one employer response can cover a whole cohort if the employer rates them the same and states how many graduates are included [4].

Getting the Response Rate Up

The honest version of the problem: these surveys fail on logistics, not intent. CoAEMSP's FAQ lists the common failure modes — stale contact information on file, graduates who never return requests, unknown employers, employers who worry the survey "may be viewed as part of the employer evaluation process for the employee," surveys that reach the right employer but not the person who actually evaluates the graduate, staggered completion dates with no consistent six-month trigger, and the simple missed send date [4].

Its recommended countermeasures, roughly in the FAQ's own order [4]:

• Obtain employment information from each student before they leave the program, and ask them to keep the program updated on employment changes and contact information.
• Send follow-up email and text reminders that the survey is coming, and use any social media groups the students organized.
• Let graduates know that emails from an electronic survey provider may go to a spam folder.
• Task a program staff member to place calls or texts to non-respondents, review the survey verbally, and record the responses.
• Set calendar reminders for when surveys are due to be distributed, and keep a mechanism to determine who has returned and who needs reminders.
• Consider inducements — a small gift card, a drawing — knowing they "have the potential to negate the perception of anonymity."
• Invest in the relationship during the program: "Students who perceive that you are interested in their feedback are more likely to respond following graduation." Engaged Advisory Committee members are more likely to provide written assessments.

Recording the Results as Outcomes Evidence

This is where the survey stops being a folder of PDFs and becomes accreditation evidence. The chain CoAEMSP's FAQ lays out: results are reviewed "with program faculty, administration, program medical director, and the Advisory Committee," and used "to inform your program quality review process and long-range planning" [4]. The raw survey documentation stays with the program — but "Programs will be required to submit evidence of the survey process, results, analysis, and any action plans with the Self-Study Report and site visitors may ask to review the raw data" [4].

So the file you keep is not the instrument. It is the distribution log (who was sent what, when, by which channel), the return rate by cohort and by survey, the analysis, the record that the review happened with the right people in the room, and any action plan that followed a marginal result. Thresholds apply to retention, credentialing, and placement rather than to survey scores, but they are the context the surveys feed. When a threshold isn't met, the standards escalate from analysis to dialogue: the program must participate in a dialogue with the CoA and submit an action plan that includes "an analysis of any deficiencies, corrective steps, and timeline for implementation," and then assess the effectiveness of the corrective steps [3]. CoAEMSP's monitoring process is published — a Letter of Concern in the first year a threshold is missed (and a second in the second year), a Findings Letter and Progress Report in the third, and a possible probation recommendation in the fourth [5] — so the paper trail you build in year one is what you stand on in year three.

The annual report is the other place the surveys show up — as process, not results. CoAEMSP no longer asks for survey results in the annual report, because survey results can lag the calendar-year reporting window; but the report still asks whether all graduates and employers were surveyed in the reporting year, and a "no" requires an explanation as to why they were not [4]. That one checkbox is the cheapest and most expensive question in the report: unexplained, it is a finding. How that report fits together is covered in our post on the CoA annual report; this post covers one of the data families it is built on.

What MapOutcomes Changes

MapOutcomes' CAAHEP vertical gives the survey workflow a home that outlasts any single coordinator. The distribution log, return rates, analysis, review notes, and action plan are evidence items linked to the standards they support — so "evidence of the survey process" becomes an export, not an archaeology project. When a site visitor asks for the raw data, the answer is a path, not a search. And when the coordinator leaves, the next person inherits the assembled record — who was surveyed, what came back, what the program did about it — instead of the folklore of where the files live.

Where to Go Next

Two things to do this week:

1. Find your CoA's survey requirements and read them end to end. Every CoA defines its own version of the outcomes standard. If yours hasn't published a FAQ, study CoAEMSP's — it is the most detailed public template for what a reviewer expects.
2. Build the distribution log before the next send date. Who was sent what, when, by which channel, and who has returned. The return rate is the first number a reviewer will ask for, and it can't be reconstructed after the fact.

For the rest of the outcomes picture: our post on CAAHEP outcomes thresholds covers the retention, credentialing, and placement numbers the surveys sit alongside, and the CoA annual report post covers where all of it lands each year.

References

1. CAAHEP, "CAAHEP Accreditation Process," caahep.org. [Online]. Available: https://www.caahep.org/program-directors/accreditation-process
2. CAAHEP, "Maintaining Program Data and Outcomes," caahep.org. [Online]. Available: https://www.caahep.org/program-directors/maintaining-program-data
3. CAAHEP, "Emergency Medical Services Professions Standards and Guidelines (2023, effective Jan. 1, 2024)," CoAEMSP (coaemsp.org), 2023. [Online]. Available: https://coaemsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/CAAHEP-Standards-amp-Guidelines-2023.pdf
4. CoAEMSP, "FAQ: Graduate and Employer Surveys (August 2026)," coaemsp.org, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://coaemsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/FAQ-Graduate-Employer-Surveys-2026.08.pdf
5. CoAEMSP, "FAQ: Program Outcomes: Measurement and Accountability (August 2026)," coaemsp.org, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://coaemsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/FAQ-Program-Outcomes-2026.08-rev.pdf
6. CoAEMSP, "FAQ: Practices for Tracking Graduate Placement (January 2026)," coaemsp.org, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://coaemsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/FAQ-Placement-2026.01.pdf
7. CoARC, "Annual Reporting Tool," coarc.com. [Online]. Available: https://coarc.com/accreditation-resources/annual-reporting-tool/