Clustering analysis on questionnaire data for program accreditation

The aim of the SOCRATES EIE-Surveyor project is to be a reference point for electrical and information engineering in Europe, bringing together representatives from 27 out of 31 eligible countries. One of the tasks of the project is the evaluation of the accreditation processes in the participating countries. A questionnaire about the accreditation process was developed and sent to project partners in each participating country. The main areas investigated the nature of the accreditation body, the criteria, which are evaluated, the structure of the visit and the decision formulation. The results of the questionnaire, was analyzed using clustering analysis and more precisely hierarchical, in order to compare the answers in 17 European countries and to find similarities among them. As distance measures the Euclidian metric and the city block distance was used. Average linkage, and Ward clustering algorithms was utilized.