The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 2 - 13

Development, Validity, and Reliability of the Campus Residential Experience Survey

FOUR AREAS VITAL TO LEARNING
OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM
As mentioned above, four areas emerge from
the literature as vital to the educational experience of on-campus living environments: the
institutional importance of students living on
campus, the role of residence life professionals
as educators, the importance of student-faculty
interaction where students live, and the impact
of facility design. These four areas formed our
conceptual framework.
Importance of students living on campus.
Living on campus refers to students who live in
residential environments that are owned and
staffed by an higher education institution.
Such facilities may include traditional residence halls, apartments, living-learning communities, and residential colleges. Although
for decades, scholars have found living on
campus to be important for student success
(Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005), recent literature on this topic more rigorously supports
these claims (Schudde, 2011). Prior studies
often did not take into account that students
who live on campus may differ from students
who do not live on campus in terms of prior
academic achievement (Blimling, 1989; Huhn,
2006; Thompson, Samiratedu, & Rafter,
1993). Also, research on residential life has not
typically accounted for self-selection bias with
sophisticated quasi-experimental methods.
To address these issues, Schudde (2011) employed propensity score matching and regression analyses to determine the causal effect of
campus residency on student retention. Utilizing data from the Educational Longitudinal
Study (ELS) and the Integrated Postsecondary
Education Data System (IPEDS), she found
a positive and significant impact of living on

campus on retention, even after accounting for
student background characteristics. Specifically, first-year students who lived on campus
experienced a 3.3 percentage point increase
in their persistence to the second year - a
statistically significant and meaningful effect
(Schudde, 2011).

The role of residence life professionals
as educators. Student affairs professional is a
general term used for all staff members who
take primary responsibility for student development and success outside the classroom.
Such administrators typically are centralized within their own units (e.g., division of
student affairs). Student affairs professionals
seek to educate the whole student by promoting student learning and development outside
the classroom (Dungy & Gordon, 2011). The
residence life professional is the student affairs
professional dealing most directly with oncampus residential environments, although
other student affairs professionals may have
influence depending on the nature of the institution and the structure of the division of
student affairs.
The role of residence life professionals as educators refers to the level of physical and psychological involvement student affairs administrators
have within a residential community. A low
level of engagement may only include maintenance of the physical environment and policy
enforcement. A high level of engagement adds
responsibilities such as programming, fostering community, and promoting student learning (Manning, Kinzie, & Schuh, 2014). There
is renewed emphasis by scholars to advocate
for student affairs professionals as educators
in addition to their administrative functions
(Keeling, 2006; Rhatigan, 2009). Student
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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 2