The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 39, No. 2 & Volume 40, No. 1 - 16

Stephanie Sickler • Beverly Roskos

choose to live in and was it related to the attributes of their current housing? It is hoped that
this study can provide insight into what would
attract students to campus housing and what
the most effective way would be to expand
campus housing, with the ultimate goal of recruiting and retaining students. We focus on
first-year students because they were the ones
who most recently made decisions about attending the university and were choosing residence halls for the first time.

METHOD
Participants and Procedure
Data from two samples across two different
years (2009 and 2010) were gathered. For the
2009 sample, all students currently living in
on-campus housing (N = 6,973) in November
2009 received an email asking them to complete
a survey on student perceptions of on-campus
housing. The emails were sent by the Office of
Housing and Residential Communities, and the
survey was administered online via SurveyMonkey. Students were given one month to complete the survey with a reminder email delivered
one week before the deadline. A total of n = 720
students responded (10.4%), but 58 students
declined to participate after reading the participant information about the study. Another
32 answered fewer than 50% of the questions,
leaving n = 630 participants (9.0%). The majority of respondents were women (70%), a higher
percentage than in the general population of
students living in campus housing (almost
54%). (See Table 1.) In addition, the sample consisted of almost 50% freshmen, and that was a
smaller proportion of first-year students than
in the population of students living in the undergraduate residence halls (72%). There were

more women in the group of first-year student
respondents than there were in the population.
Finally, 77.8% of our first-year student respondents were concentrated in 7 of the 20 available
living options at the time; 2 were older residence halls (built between 1948 and 1968), and
5 were newer residence halls (built or renovated
between 2001 and 2009).
For the 2010 sample, we changed recruitment strategies to garner a larger sample. A
random sample of 3,000 students—approximately 40% of N = 7,408 students living in
campus housing—was selected by the Office
of Housing and Residential Communities to
receive the survey. Community directors from
the office met with the residential advisors
(RAs) in November 2010 for training on administration of the survey. The RAs then gave
the surveys in hard copy to the selected students, collected them afterward, and sent the
completed surveys to the first author. As part
of the survey, students were given an information sheet about the study and their rights as
a participant. RAs had approximately three
weeks to collect completed surveys. This new
recruitment strategy was successful; a total of n
= 1,272 students responded (42.4%), or 17.2%
of the population (Table 1). The percentage of
women in the sample (57%) closely matched
the percentage in the population of students
living in campus housing in 2010 (54%), as
did the percentage of students in each year
(e.g., 73% of the sample and population were
freshmen). Looking only at the n = 926 firstyear students in the sample, the percentage of
women (58%) was comparable to the percentage in the population of first-year students
(56%). Similar to the 2009 sample, although
there were 20 campus living options at the

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 39, No. 2 & Volume 40, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 39, No. 2 & Volume 40, No. 1