Opening the Suitcase

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JMC 380: Public Relations

Pilot Study

Opening the Suitcase

A study to better understand the suitcase-college stereotype at UNC and why students return home so frequently

Steven Baltizar Hillary Creech Kyle Marshall

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Elizabeth Same
Introduction

Background: Greeley has long been known for being a town with a college in it, but has not been know as being a college town. The term suitcase college- meaning students go home every weekend, so they essentially live out of their suitcases- has become a common description of the University of Northern Colorado environment. Our group thought that students living in the residence halls were more likely to go home on the weekends, and we wanted to understand why they were consistently leaving. We thought this was an important area to research, because we felt that the suitcase college stereotype was negatively impacting UNCs image. When part of the student population is consistently leaving it creates a more fragmented and divided student body. If the students think that the student body is fragmented and divided, they will not enjoy their experience at UNC as much as they could.

Goals: Our primary goal was to determine if the suitcase college stereotype was actually in effect at the UNC campus. We also wanted to determine why students are leaving campus. We wanted to use that collected date to create a plan that UNC can implement in order to create a more cohesive student body. When students feel more a part of the student body they will be better advocates for the school. The plan we wanted to create, would not only help create higher student satisfaction (internal satisfaction), but it would also create a better image of UNC as a whole (external satisfaction).

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Preliminary research: The initial idea for our research project came from things that we had all heard around campus. Once we decided on this topic, we each held informal focus group style conversations with other students on campus to determine if this was an area that needed attention. These small focus groups helped us form questions and pinpoint exactly what we wanted to learn. From here, we created a survey and piloted it among our peers. During this pilot, we refined our questions and got some initial feedback about our research. The feedback we received helped us refine our question and determine the most specific way to word our surveys.

Methodology

In order to better understand why UNC students frequently leave campus, when class isnt in session, our group crafted a survey asking several questions dealing with possible causes for the absence. Students were sought out while in the residence halls, student events, and in classrooms. The qualifying question of, do you live in the dorms? was asked to each individual before actually allowing a student to take the survey. We were not looking to research students who lived off campus since they more frequently stay in town.

Demographic Survey Questions The survey began with demographic related questions including gender, age, and hometown. The gender and age are mainly standard for any survey and could possibly result in some interesting correlations, but we had no predictions concerning this. We thought hometown

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could possibly relate to how frequently an individual goes home. An individual from nearby areas would be more likely to visit their parents frequently than someone from out of state who can only fly home during the holidays. Next, we asked what school year the individual was currently in, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior or graduate student. We knew we would mostly be dealing with freshmen, but it was worth asking to see if there are differences in frequency of leaving for older students. The last, more demographic-related, question asked was where the surveyed individual lived. The opinions included West Campus, Central Campus, UNC Apartments, and N/A or Off Campus. This question could have been limited to West Campus and Central Campus for our pilot study, but for a larger study the other options could provide useful information. We wanted to see if the dorm location had any correlations with how frequently the student left for home.

Activity & Relationship Questions The heart of the survey dealt with the individuals activities and relationships. The stronger bond of relationships and frequency of activities were more likely to help the student to stay on campus over the course of the weekend. Concerning activity the third question on our survey asked Which best suites your job location? The offered responses included on campus, Greeley, Loveland or Fort Collins, outside of Northern Colorado and N/A (meaning the student has no job). Our group agreed that having a job located on campus or in Greeley was something that definitely tied them down into staying in town more often. At the same time, if the student had a job back home while in school in Greeley, clearly said person would be leaving the area on a regular basis.

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The fourth question was very important to our topic digging for information on how often a student goes home. Reponses were limited to weekly, bi-weekly (meaning every two weeks, not twice a week), monthly, only during breaks, or rarely/never. The response here is what our primary focus is on for our survey and will help to see which respondents to further inspect if they are frequently leaving UNC to go home. The final questions dealing with activity are questions seven and eight which ask if the student participates in any clubs, organizations or athletics and how many (if any). From personal experiences, the group agreed that being an active member with on-campus groups would keep students busy even on weekends and encourage students to stick around and be a part of their chosen group. Sports usually have practice, fraternities, sororities and other organizations often have events on weekends and in general it can be assumed that most people dont want to miss out on something with an organization theyve chosen to be a part of. Questions dealing with relationships start with question five, which was Why do you go home? Most of our possible answers dealt with people being family, work, significant other, roommate, and other. Clearly the work response would just clarify possible conclusions dealing with question number three, but the rest could lead us to assume strengths in certain relationships. Many of us agreed that we knew someone our freshmen year who always went home because of their high school boyfriend or girlfriend, and we hoped wed see that again in our surveys. We also wanted to find out if a relationship with a roommate was the cause of a student leaving whenever possible. A bad roommate could definitely play a factor in why someone would want to get out of this town. Our final and only other question dealing with relationships asked How often do your friends go home on weekends? with the same responses as for the individual personally, being

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weekly, bi-weekly (once every two weeks, not once a week), monthly, only during, breaks, rarely/never. We figured the response for how often the student goes home and how often their friends go home would be similar. Why would you want to stick around if your friends go home every weekend? At the same time, why go home and miss out when your friends are having fun when schools out?

Findings:

Demographics: Our pilot study consisted of 41 completed surveys. Of the 41 participant that were surveyed 61% were female and 39% were male. The majority of students that participated were 19. 70.7% were freshman, 17% were sophomores, and 12.2% were juniors or seniors. For our hometown demographic we divided Colorado into three separate sections: Northern Colorado, Denver/metro area, and Southern/Eastern and the remaining Colorado areas. We also included a category for students that live out of state. Of the 41 participants, 65.9% are from the area, 14.6% are Colorado, 12.2% and 7.3% are from Colorado. Denver/Metro from Northern are out of state, the other areas in

This bar graph shows where the students we surveyed live when they are not in school.

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For this survey, we considered housing as a demographic characteristic. We thought it would help us determine if there was correlation between the area of campus that a student lived, and the frequency that they left. Of the students that we surveyed, 53.7% lived in dorms on West Campus, 29.3% lived in central campus, and the remainder lived in campus apartments or off campus.

Homeward bound: In the initial stages of our pilot study, we expected students to return home with a very high frequency. The data has shown, however, that only 12.2% of participants return home weekly. We were surprised to find that the largest majority of participants, 36.6% go home on a monthly basis.

The pie chart shows the frequency that students are generally leaving campus. *note in this survey biweekly was understood as twice per month.

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Its all in the family: We found that family was the biggest reason that students left campus. 71% left to visit with family, 22.9% left campus to visit a significant other, and 5.8% left for work or other reasons. As we expected, the data shows that the friends of the participants in our surveys were going home with similar frequencies as our participants. We assumed that this survey would prove that students would have similar habits in regards to reasonings for and frequency of leaving.

This graph shows the reasons why students are leaving campus.

Put it on my tab: We were surprised to find that 43.9% of participants did not have jobs while being enrolled in classes. We wanted to determine if students would leave campus on a more regular

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basis because of jobs they had in different locations. The data shows, though, that jobs did not play a significant impact in the frequency of students leaving.
This bar graph shows how many students have jobs while they are enrolled in classes, and also where their jobs are located.

Taking it outside the classroom: We were also surprised to find that 56.1% of participants were involved in a club/organization or athletics on campus. This involvement helps students feel more attached to the campus as a whole which is a contributing factor to why students stay on campus more than we expected.

Discussion/Conclusion

Plan of Action

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After conducting our research we have found that most students leave campus on a monthly basis. When beginning this study, we had thought there was more of a problem with students leaving than there actually is. Based on information we found on the University of Northern Colorados website, an estimate of 2,000 students live in the resident halls between both west and central campus. This pilot study only required us to survey 40 of these 2,000 residents. For this reason we recommend the university to take part in a further study to see if these results vary based on the amount of students who are surveyed. Based on the majority of our respondents leaving campus monthly, we also recommend the UNC administration to consider implementing a PR plan in order to increase awareness about the many student activities the university offers. There are many clubs and organizations on the UNC campus as well events puts on by the University Program Council. With an effective PR plan these events, clubs, and activities could become much more well-known and help to keep students on campus and more involved. With more students taking advantage of these campuswide amenities, they will have a much more fulfilling college experience which could, in turn, positively market UNC as a whole.

Limitations Our biggest limitation when conducting this pilot study is that we were only able to survey about 2% of the residents living on campus. It is very difficult to determine how accurate these results are due to our low percentage of respondents. If the university were to choose to conduct a further study in this area, we would suggest surveying a much higher percentage of residents.

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Another limitation we found in our study is that we surveyed many more students on west campus rather than spreading out the surveys equally between the sections of dorms on campus. West campus houses many more students which may offer the sense of community in which the central campus does not. In conducting this research, our results may have been affected due to this. A limitation, in which we as a group would fix if this study were to be done again, is we did not account for every reason a student may leave campus on the weekends. Our survey asked students to choose between family, work, significant other, and roommate. Had we asked for additional reasons why residents leave, we may have been enlightened in how to address the problem and come up with possible solutions. Also, a few respondents selected more than one answer on this question which then resulted in us having to throw out those particular surveys. This caused an error in our percentages and made our findings inaccurate.

Reflections After completing this study we reflect on it and realize that it would be much more effective and necessary had it been a campus-wide research study. We learned a lot through this pilot study. We learned many different techniques through trial and error in order to better our future research studies. Going into this pilot study we were under the impression that UNC is known to be a suitcase college. Upon evaluating our research and findings, we have found that UNC is not as much of a suitcase college as we had assumed and we realized it was just a stereotype in which we based our study off of. We suggest UNC administration to continue to ensure students stay on campus more often to better their years spent here.