The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 40, No. 2 & Volume 41, No. 1 - 72

Larry D. Long

Measures
The study focused on three outcome areas:
living environment, academic success, and
alcohol use. The researcher measured respondents' perception of their living environment
using four variables: living conditions, safety,
programming, and peer interaction. Living
conditions was a three-item scale ( = .809)
that measured respondents' satisfaction with
their degree of privacy and their ability to study
in their room and sleep without interruption.
The response options for these measures and
other scale items ranged from Not at all (1) to
Extremely (7). Safety was a three-item ( = .888)
measure of the extent to which respondents
felt safe in their living environment. The third
variable, programming, consisted of two items
( = .949) that measured respondents' satisfaction with the quality and variety of programs
and activities provided to them. Peer interaction was a three-item ( = .907) measure of
the degree to which the living environment of
the respondents inﬂuenced their ability to meet
people, live cooperatively, and resolve conﬂict.
All of the scales had good ( > .8) or excellent
( > .9) Cronbach's alpha reliability coefﬁcients
(George & Mallery, 2003).
Academic success was measured using two
variables: Study and GPA. Study was measured
using a question that asked respondents to
report the number of hours they studied per
week. The response categories ranged from
None (1) to More than 25 (6). GPA was the selfreported cumulative grade point average of
the respondents at the time when the survey
was completed. The variable consisted of the
following response categories: Below 2.50 (1),
2.50 to 2.74 (2), 2.75 to 2.99 (3), 3.00 to 3.24 (4),
3.25 to 3.49 (5), 3.50 to 3.74 (6), 3.75 to 4.00 (7).
72

The researcher measured the alcohol use of
the respondents using two variables: Alcohol Use
Frequency and Binge Drinking. The ﬁrst variable
was the respondents' self-reported frequency of
alcohol consumption. The response categories
were I do not consume alcohol, Once per week or
less, Two to three times per week, Almost every day,
and Every day. The second variable represented
the prevalence of excessive alcohol use among
respondents, which was measured using a
question that asked them to report how many
alcoholic drinks they usually consumed per
sitting. The response items were collapsed into
three categories: Does not consume alcohol (0),
Consumed between 1 and 4 drinks per sitting (1),
and Consumed 5 or more drinks per sitting (2).

Participants
After creating the variables of interest, accounting for missing values using list-wise deletion,
and removing ﬁrst-year students, merging the
data from the two assessments resulted in a
sample of 2,885 participants, including 239
fraternity house residents, 193 sorority house
residents, and 2,453 participants who lived in
an on-campus residence hall. The researcher
used the full subsample of sorority members
and randomly sampled 193 participants from
the other three groups (fraternity members and
on-campus residents, both men and women)
to produce equally sized groups of men and
women from both assessments. About 54% of
the respondents were sophomores, 32% were
juniors, and 14% were seniors. First-year students were not included in the study because
they were required to live in on-campus
housing. The ethnic distribution of the sample
was 5% Black/African-American, 7% Asian/
Middle Eastern/Paciﬁc Islander, 5% Spanish/

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 40, No. 2 & Volume 41, No. 1

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