The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1 - 53

Admonitory Norms in Housing and Residence Life

Inappropriate Personal Relationships. This
norm censures transgressions of boundaries
that may compromise professional effectiveness because of inappropriate personal relationships. HRL staff members who have a
one-night stand with another staff member
or who date undergraduate students create
a perception of an unethical organizational
climate. If these indiscretions occur frequently, the reputation of HRL as an organizational
unit that supports the educational mission of
the college or university becomes tarnished
and its effectiveness diminished.

participants and members of underrepresented racial/ethnic groups). Educational level was
measured by a four-point scale, ranging from
less than a bachelor's degree to a doctoral or
professional degree. Years in the HRL profession included ﬁve categories, from <5 years to
>20 years. We created a dichotomous variable
for institutional type (four-year private = 1, all
else = 0) as there were not enough participants
from two-year or other institution types (e.g.,
proprietary) for more detailed analysis. These
small groups (6.1% total) were included with
four-year public institutions.

Differences in Objection Expressed for
Admonitory Norms
For the second research question, we tested
for differences in the degree of objection that
HRLPs expressed for each of the ﬁve admonitory norms across personal and institutional
characteristics. We computed composite
scales to measure levels of objection by summing HRLPs' perceptions of the severity of
action scale (1-5) for each of the speciﬁc proscribed behaviors encompassing a given norm
and then dividing this sum by the number of
those behaviors. We conducted multiple linear
regressions to determine if the relationships
were statistically signiﬁcant.
To run regression analyses, we created
dummy variables for two of the four personal
characteristics: gender (female = 1, all else =
0) and race/ethnicity. Due to small groups
of respondents, we aggregated professionals
of color and coded the group 1, and assigned
White, non-Hispanic a zero. Using dummy
variables allowed us to include participants
in groups too small in number for statistically
meaningful comparisons (i.e., transgender

In other words, neither inviolable
nor admonitory norm violations
are to be ignored; some response
by an administrator is warranted.

The regression results are displayed in
Table 3. We used the .05 level of statistical
signiﬁcance and conﬁrmed that multicollinearity diagnoses were within acceptable
parameters for tolerance and variance inﬂation factor, indicating the predictor variables are not highly correlated (Ethington,
Thomas, & Pike, 2002). Standardized coefﬁcients of less than .05 were considered trivial.
Signiﬁcant ﬁndings materialized in each of
the ﬁve admonitory norms. Therefore, we determined that normative patterns vary across
personal and institutional characteristics.

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1

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