journal_vol49no2 - 57

The Anatomy of Room Change
er education researchers have yet to consider these myriad factors in a more coherent
model that accurately reflects the social and environmental complexity confronting
residence life professionals who manage diverse residence hall environments. For example,
SES and race influence the development of roommate friendships, but how
these two factors interact has not been explored in the context of other social and
environmental conditions. We build upon the existing literature by bringing personal
factors, roommates, residence hall design, and academic performance into a single
analytical and conceptual model to more fully represent the anatomy of room change
requests in residence halls.
METHOD
Data Source and Filtering
We set out to examine the impact of residence hall design, personal attributes (gender,
race, age, and household income), roommate differences (race, age, and household
income), and academic performance on roommate changes. We obtained data
for incoming first-year students during six fall semesters at a university in the eastern
United States. While roommate changes are not the norm, a number of requests inevitably
occur, and sometimes these requests are motivated by success and flourishing
rather than difficulty and conflict. One category of success-obtaining a residence hall
leadership position-was eliminated from the data. Other student attributes that may
encourage or discourage room change requests or were not consistent with the typical
profile of first-year students were also eliminated: students over 20, transfer students,
and NCAA athletes. Following these exclusions, we derived a final sample size
of 17,448 students, 542 of whom experienced a room change from fall to spring (3.1%).
Participants
In the final sample of 17,448 first-year students, the reported race/ethnicity figures
over six years were 71.5% White, 13.3% who did not report their race, 5.6% Hispanic/
Latino, 3.9% Black, 2.1% Asian, 3.1% two or more races, and 0.1% Native Americans or
Pacific Islanders (see Table 1, page 55). Consistent with current cultural trends in college
attendance, women (n = 9,486; 54.4%) were a higher proportion of those included in
the analysis than men (n = 7,962; 45.6%). The reported ages in the sample were 18
years (n = 13,392; 76.8%), 19 years (n = 2,964; 16.9%), and 20 years (n = 1,092; 6.3%).
Design
Two basic designs characterize residence halls on this campus: suite-style (n = 4,984)
and double-corridor (n = 12,464). There were two suite-style housing choices, standard
and premium, which differed primarily in the number of floors and the age of the
building. There were three different double-corridor housing choices: (1) one six-story
women's residence hall; (2) a set of three-story residence halls centralized on the main
campus among the academic buildings and athletic fields; and (3) two eight-story
54 The Journal of College and University Student Housing
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