The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2 - 50

Jessica Wode

Two other surveys were distributed to two
different populations. Because the annual
on-campus feedback survey does not include
the juniors, seniors, and graduate students in
the university-owned rental houses, a shorter
survey (15 questions) was developed for these
students. As an incentive, an Amazon gift
card was offered for one randomly selected
tenant who completed the survey. Of the 76
tenants, 34 completed the survey (44.7%).
These respondents were primarily seniors or
above (60.5%), and the majority were female
(68.4%).

Important or N/A to Me). There were two Other
options that allowed respondents to fill in their
own factors and rate their importance. The
factors found by Li et al. (2005) to be important predictor variables of staying on campus
or moving off campus were used as my starting point for developing the list of 21 factors.

The third and final survey, similar to that
for the rental house tenants, was sent to all undergraduate students under the age of 25 who
did not live in university housing. As an incentive, an Amazon gift card was offered for five
randomly selected respondents. Of these 1,415
off-campus students, 42.0% completed the
entire survey (N = 594). These students were
mostly seniors or above (44.7%) or juniors
(35.3%), and the majority were female (68.9%).

valued hall staff and high-quality,

As previously mentioned, first-year students are required to live on campus unless

. . . having effective, highly
relevant programming to facilitate
student bonding may positively
impact how many students seek
to return to campus housing
the following year .

Survey Instrument
I included the same two question sets in the
annual campus housing survey and the rental
tenant and off-campus student surveys. Respondents were shown a list of 21 factors in
randomized order and asked, "When deciding
where to live (e.g., traditional residence hall,
campus apartment, university rental, off-campus apartment or house), how important are
the following factors to you?" Each factor was
rated as Very Important, Somewhat Important,
Not Very Important, and Not Important or N/A
to Me. The points on this ordinal scale were
assigned values of 4 (Very Important) to 1 (Not

granted an exemption to live at home. To
capture additional data from students voluntarily living on campus, respondents who had
not identified themselves as first-year students
were asked to identify up to three factors as the
most important in their decision of where to
live that year. This question was also asked of
the off-campus students.
Second, all respondents were asked,
"Ideally, where do you plan to live next academic year? If you don't know for sure, provide
your best guess." A list of 11 possible options
was provided; for the purposes of analysis,

T h e J o u r n a l o f C o l l e g e a n d U n i v e r s i t y St u d e n t H o u s i n g

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2