Relation between Housing Arrangements and Students’
Academic Performance at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Yufei Zhang, Jinqian Xu, and
Oscar Albarran
ACE 471 Research Project
Fall, 2015
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Dr. Mary P. Arends-Kuenning
Research Supervisor
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Abstract
In this paper, we study the effects on academic performance of living in on-campus housing or in
private off-campus housing. This subject interested us because so many students live away from
the dormitories, and we wondered if these living arrangements had any effect on grade point
average (GPA). We conducted focus groups to gather qualitative data to gain a better
understanding about how people feel about living arrangements and academic performance.
From these responses, we composed questions for an online survey designed to find patterns and
relations between living arrangements and academic performance. In conclusion, we
demonstrated that housing options have an effect on a student’s academic performance.
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Acknowledgments
Our group would like to thank Professor Mary Arends-Kuenning for her continuous support and
guidance throughout the semester. We would be lost without her help. We would also like to
show our appreciation for our online survey participants, our focus group participants, and for
everyone who has contributed to our research project: this project could not be accomplished
without their extraordinary support and information provided. Lastly we would also like to thank
Mari Anne Brocker Curry, the Assoc. Director, Housing Information Office, for taking the time
out of her schedule to answer some of our questions.
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Table of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….. 4
Background………………………………………………………………………………... 5
Literature Review……………………………………………………………………..…... 8
Hypotheses……………………………………………………………………..…………..12
Methodology……………………………………………………………………..………...13
Focus Groups……………………………………………………………………….13
Online Survey……………………………………………………………………….15
Findings…………………………………………………………………………………….17
Findings from focus groups………………………………………………………....17
Findings from Online Survey………………………………………………………. 20
Policy Implications……………………………………………………………………..…..32
Study Limitation…………………………………………………………………………....34
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..36
Reference…………………………………………………………………………………....39
Appendix………………………………………………………………………………….....40
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Introduction
How university living situations affect students’ academic performance is an important
question for both students and university facility administrators. Different opinions have been
given to the public, which includes people beginning to realize the impact of different living
choices for college students. The big question is whether there exists a positive or negative effect
or no obvious relation and this motivated us to research whether there is a correlation between
different university living choices and students’ academic performance. In the process of
undertaking our research, setting focus groups, and sending an online survey to participants, we
also tried to find out more about the facts underneath the surface. As a group we discussed and
developed some assumptions regarding students’ behaviors, then used these as our research
questions. This research comprised three parts: what factors influence students to make
accommodation decisions; how their living situations has been related to their GPA currently and
in the past; and why, if there is a relation, that happens.
We become interested in this topic because of availability of many different types of
housing facilities for students. With all these options, which one had a higher percentage of
students with high GPA? We also wondered if there are any other characteristics that also affect
GPA negatively or positively, these characteristics would be any feature or trait that would make
a housing option more desirable than other options. Our research group used focus group and an
online survey to obtain data and analyze them. In this Research, the authors find that certain
housing arrangements including distance, type of housing and level prenatal support has impacts
on students’ academic performance, while other factors like housing quality and number of
roommates do not.
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Background
Housing is a part of university life that affects students at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). When students first step onto the campus, they begin to seriously
consider questions like where to live the following year—University Residence Halls,
apartments or elsewhere? Who will be their roommates next year? We hope that our work on
researching housing and its relevant influence will inform the students on our campus.
At UIUC, it is required that students live in dormitories for their freshman year. After
living for one year on campus, students are free to choose where to live. Usually, students
already have a general impression of the university housing. Problems have come up that
influence students’ decisions for the upcoming sophomore year—many problems could arise and
also different students may have different opinions on housing. However, there is one thing in
common that most students care about: their academic performance. Grade point average (GPA)
is the numerical assessment of their academic performance, however, we could not find any
research papers relating to student housing in UIUC and GPA. Students at UIUC need this
information regarding academic performance to be able to make well-informed decisions about
accommodation. This is what motivated us to conduct this research on housing, and talk about
the related GPA figures on a large scale.
Until the research stage, after getting approval from university office, we set up focus
groups for interviewing students. The participants of the focus groups included domestic and
international students at UIUC, and we also attempted to ensure that they were from different
colleges within the university. Further, we wrote an online survey and distributed it via social
media such as Facebook and WeChat and also by e-mail. When we initially formulated our
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research questions, we wanted to focus on the impact of roommates’ abuse of alcohol and drugs
on students’ academic performance. However, under university and federal policies we were not
allowed to ask questions about drinking alcohol and using drugs because these kinds of activities
are either illegal or not suitable for most students because of their ages . Thus, we decided to
abandon the questions relating to this subject. As a result, that restricted our research; however,
on a positive note it made us work more broadly on the relation between student housing and
academic performance. Due to the confidentiality agreements, we do not reveal the real names of
focus group participants in this paper.
We also contacted the housing office with the hope of learning some things about the oncampus housing. We had fourteen questions regarding policies and processes for the residential
halls. We received a response from the Associate Director of the Housing Information Office,
who oversees the office that provides students with options from residence halls and private
certified housing.
The Associate Director provided interesting information about how the residential halls
operate, and their policies. We queried how the university determines the rent per semester and
discovered that they calculate a per night cost based on the number of nights in a semester and
also costs for providing services and programs. These services and programs include things like
meals, on-call staff, and even some academic programs. They evaluate these amenities with
student feedback, market trends, and the cost to the student. The Associate Director explained
that security and access committees constantly evaluate policies on safety issues such as card
access, escorted guests, security patrols, fire and life protocol meetings, and security cameras.
Roommate assignment was something that we were very interested in, as this was one of
the factors that could potentially make or break the on-campus experience for some students. We
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learned that students can pick their own room via self assignment. Two friends can find a room
together or use the roommate profile questions in the application to search, contact, and request a
roommate. Students can also go the opposite route and get a random roommate by choosing an
occupied room or a vacant room that will eventually also get occupied by someone else. While
on the topic of choosing a room, we looked at the percentage of the rooms that were currently
being used. The dormitories open at 100 percent capacity in the beginning of the fall semester.
By the second semester the housing office expects a 3–5 percent drop because of graduations,
studying abroad, and other similar issues. To be at full capacity there must be reasons why
residential halls attract so many students; some of the reasons listed in the housing offices
surveys are good location, community atmosphere, roommates, new constant rate program,
dining options leadership opportunities, and security. However, there are also those that do not
have such a positive opinion of life in a dormitory; some of the problems that come up are
roommate conflicts and wireless internet, depending on the time of year and building. From their
exit surveys, students listed some factors on why they moved out of the dormitories, such as the
room and board costs being too high, quality of life, they are ready to move on, independence,
Greek live-in requirements, amenities, or just leaving the university.
For the academic side, we wondered how that played into residence hall life. when we
asked if the housing office would share some data on GPA of the students living in dorms, the
data they shared with us was that students living in University housing for more than a year are
more likely to graduate and and also graduate in 4 years that those that move out after their first
year. The housing office said that the dorms have very supportive environments for academic
performance. They might expect that students in dorms have less problems than those living offcampus. when asked why that was the housing officer responded with this, “There are a ton of
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resources! Study space, quiet hours, tutors, group study rooms, libraries, computer labs, course
for credit offered in the residence halls, additional programs like writer’s workshops and resume
building etc. Some of our Living Learning communities have even more access to professors,
classroom space, and programming. In addition, we take care of the cooking, cleaning and
shopping so students have more time to learn and grow”. So it seems that there is a lot of help
that is provided in the dorms for academic success.
Literature Review
Empirical research has provided us with reliable information about the impact of housing
arrangements on students’ academic performance. Those sources focused on questions including
the effects of living in fraternities and sororities compared to living in dormitories (De Los Reyes
& Rich, 2003), alcohol usage in apartments and its impact on a student’s GPA (Kremer and Levy
2008), and peer effects from roommates on students’ academic achievements (Sacerdote, 2001).
All of those studies have helped us to find an effective method to evaluate the impact of different
housing options on a student’s GPA.
The most instructive research that has been conducted concerns the effect of having a
roommate who is a drinker on a student’s academic performance. Reading that paper gives a
general idea about how destructive a bad roommate can be to a student’s grades (Kremer and
Levy, 2008). For instance Kremer and Levy make the point that students with a roommate who
had already been drinking before college will have a lower GPA than those who are assigned
non-drinking roommates. Kremer and Levy conducted their research in a context of a large state
university and as UIUC is a typical large state university, we might expect to see a similar
situation, ceteris paribus. They found that, for males, their GPA would be 0.28 points lower than
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average if they have a roommate who was frequently drinking prior to undergraduate life;
however, for males with an occasional drinker roommate, the GPA reduction is 0.26.
Furthermore, the data are all statistically significant at a 5% level. Thus, their work inspired us to
think of how those bad habits may affect a roommate’s peers. Although we do not have a
substance-free dormitory on campus and we cannot ask questions related to alcohol in our online
survey and focus group, we do have some other factors to examine. For example, a roommate
who is addicted to playing games might influence his peer’s grades.
However, our research group disagree with a point that Kremer and Levy put forward in
their paper:
“More broadly, our findings seem more consistent with theories in which peer effects
operate by influencing preferences than with those in which peers change narrowly
interpreted endowments—for example by providing help with homework or by disrupting
study.”
Kremer and Levy (2008) demonstrated that having a drinking roommate changes a
student’s attitude towards drinking instead of simply disrupt their normal life. What they mean is
that your roommates tendencies can possibly have an effect on your own habits. Our group
would like to study, using focus groups, whether peer effects from the roommates would change
an individual’s preference or just simply disrupt their life. We hold the idea that disrupting
behaviors will have an impact even in the short term.
We were also interested in the effect on student’s academic performances of living in
fraternities and sororities. De Los Reyes and Rich (2003) noted that as universities in the United
States have been expanding at a higher speed than their capacity to accommodate students,
fraternities took the responsibility of providing accommodation for some of the students.
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Furthermore, residential fraternity and sorority houses have a freedom that university-run
dormitories cannot offer. Thus, in this paper, De Los Reyes and Rich (2003) make the point that
although fraternity houses alleviate housing problems to some extent they do bring some other
issues:
“They were difficult to control, and universities found that even the best efforts at
regulation did not end the difficulties with drinking and substance abuse, deaths and injuries
because of hazing, and low academic performance because of a generally lax atmosphere.”
As De Los Reyes and Rich did not use any quantitative data to support their argument,
we would like explore this issue in more depth and would like to see if the reduction of student
grades is a statistically significant impact from living in fraternity houses.
The peer effect is an important factor in a college student’s life because they spend a
significant amount of time with their roommates or fellows other than when going to classes.
Sacerdote (2001) did good work on this topic when he conducted research with a sample of
students enrolled at Dartmouth College.
The paper by Robert L. Hall (1963) was dedicated to finding the effect of roommates on
GPA. The core of this article was based on freshmen year students who were all living in
dormitories. This is consistent with the living arrangements of first-year students at
UIUC. Hall was also trying to test whether students’ academic performance was differentially
affected by high school academic level. In the experiment, they assigned roommates into four
categories related to the High School Percentile Rank. H(H) represented a high-rank student with
a high-rank roommate, H(L) represented a high-rank student with a low-rank roommate, L(H)
represented a low-rank student with a high-rank roommate, and L(L) represented a low-rank
student with the low-rank roommate. The results showed that a high-rank student got better
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grades than low-rank students that were normally happening. However, on comparing H(H) and
H(L) to L(H) and L(L), the grades in these two categories were quite different. Overall, H(H)
had a significantly higher GPA than H(L), but L(H) and L(L) were not different enough to count
as internally affected. Therefore, the higher ability students were affected more by their
roommates than the lower ability students were..
Robert’s experiment and data give us a lot of information on the roommates’ effect with
different levels of studying ability. It is a perfect complement for our paper about university
housing. We were influenced by the methods Robert used to analyze data, such as variance
analysis and t-tests. However, the situation we are facing that is different to Robert’s study is that
of international students. In Robert’s article, “all freshmen who were over 21 or veterans of
military service, all foreign students, and all graduate students were arbitrarily excluded.”
Depending on the different situation of domestic and international students’ distribution at
UIUC, international students also play an essential role in our paper.
Peer effects are significant with the academic performance of students. Moreover, some
physical factors play important roles. Noise is one such factor we established from the article
“Sleep Patterns of College Students at a Public University” written by Forque, Camden, Gabriau,
Johnson(2008). They stated that, “This sleep deprivation can have detrimental effects on
performance, including driving and academics.” Thinking about a student’s housing options, the
sleep situation must be an important factor in their academic performance. The researchers also
found in their data that, “The most common reasons for night wakings included hearing noise
from others (41%), going to the bathroom (40%), and being worried about something (33%).”
Although the above-mentioned article did not talk about the relation between noise and academic
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performance, it made us consider the impact of noise issue as part of our questions for the focus
groups and survey.
All of this prior research is important for our study because it has provided fields for
consideration in our research. It also gives us some solid background information as well as other
important conclusions, which guides us to test similar subjects. However, most of these papers
focus more on peer effects, which are mental effects rather than other physical such as living
conditions. Thus, it was valuable to examine the relation between housing options and a
student’s academic performance in a broader and more detailed context and our research team
considered some questions and hypotheses for investigation.
Hypotheses
During our research we had five hypotheses that had to do with the possible factors that
affect housing. The first hypothesis is that having roommates that participate in disruptive
behaviors such as playing loud music, getting wild playing video games, or hosting crazy parties,
will have a negative impact on student’s GPA. We thought this because these behaviors might
disrupt studying or serve as a distraction to keep you from studying. The second hypothesis that
we came up with is that students who live further from campus tend to have lower GPAs. We
had this thought because if students have to commute long distances between classes and their
housing option, it would require them to get up earlier and to think more about skipping classes.
The third hypothesis we had is that the standard of living of a student may have an impact on
GPA. This had to do with the thought that if you are not happy with the standard of living then
that unhappiness will lead to less academic motivation. The fourth hypothesis that we came up
with is that being responsible for rent will have negative effect on student GPA. This is mostly
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because students need to come up with ways to finance their rent, like a part time job. This could
take away time from studying and it also could add additional stress to already accumulated
stress. Our last hypothesis, which is kind of our main focus, is that students living in dorms and
frat houses have a negative impact on GPA compared to those living off campus. We thought
this because living in a dorm has many factors that impacts students negatively.
Methodology
In order to obtain comprehensive datasets from UIUC students, including qualitative and
quantitative data, our group used both focus groups and online surveys. By sending emails to
UIUC students, we were able to obtain some specific numbers about housing options, and setting
up focus groups enabled us to capture individual thoughts and feelings toward the subject.
Focus Groups
The first thing we did after a literature review was to conduct focus groups. We
conducted three focus groups at different times and each group contained between three to four
people. Our initial plan was to recruit students from our other classes as well as to invite friends.
However, as we wanted to conduct the focus groups during the midterm period, most of those
students were not willing to participate. Consequently, we decided only to use convenience and
snowball samples.
We planned to have four focus groups and each group should only contain students with
the same academic standing. However, later we found this was not realistic during a limited time
period. Moreover, we believe that when people with lots of similar characteristics are gathered in
one focus group, one individual’s opinion may strongly interfere with other's thoughts, which is
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not what we were looking for in terms of independence. Thus, we decided to mix up our focus
groups including students with different academic standings. Furthermore, as most students at
UIUC had some experience of living in the dormitory, at least during their freshman year, and as
we wanted to compare perspectives on living in and out of the dormitory, we decided not to
invite any freshman to our focus groups. Thus, the participants for our focus group consisted of
sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
To ensure the fluidity of our focus group, we conducted a practice focus group in
discussion room 1 of the Undergraduate Library on September 25. There were four participants
in this focus group, all senior students. We used this practice group to ensure the clarity of our
questions, the duties of each investigator, and the time we spent in total. We did not use the
responses from our practice group, although we required them to sign the consent forms.
After finishing the practice group, we edited our final focus group questions and
conducted three formal focus groups at the same place. We have assigned each investigator’s
duty for the focus group before it actually took place; one person was the moderator and led the
conversation and the other two people were recording participants’ responses using a reorder and
a computer. Yufei was the moderator for the first focus group. Oscar and Jinqian led the second
group and Oscar moderated the last group. We conducted the first two focus groups in October
and one in November. We started with general questions and smoothly moved to more specific
ones. The following questions were used:
1. What is your overall impression of housing in this area?
2. What factors do you think may influence your choice of housing?
3. Where are you living now? How is your current living condition? (Are you satisfied?)
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4. What are some positives and negatives for living off/on campus? Such as in an
apartment.
5. What do you think of your roommates?
6. What factors may influence your academic grade?
7. How and where do you prefer to study? Why?
8: What do you do in order to get money to pay your rent? Is your rent paid by your
parents or are you working to pay it?
9: How do you think that the factors of housing may have an impact on your academic
performance?
10: Do you think there is something we have missed, but which you feel it is important to
your academic performance?
Online Survey
After the focus groups, we conducted an online survey of UIUC students to obtain
quantitative data. To enlist a larger number of participants for our online survey, students in the
ACE 471 class made a survey pool together. Each group put their online survey questions into
one overall-survey and checked for duplicated questions and revised them. There were three
main parts to the survey. The first part included a primary question that ensured the participants
were current UIUC students, and a consent form that gave information on our research,
confidentiality, and voluntary participation. Only by agreeing to those items would a student be
able to access the following sections. The second section of the online survey comprised some
specific questions asked by each research team in ACE 471. For instance, we asked five specific
questions on housing part, whereas other groups put forward different questions such as sleeping
15
conditions and time spent on transportation per day. The third part of the survey included some
general questions including gender, race, and GPA. As each group may have needed to use those
data, we put them together so that the participants did not need to fill in those questions multiple
times. The complete version of the online survey can be found in the appendix of this paper.
We used Qualtrics, an online survey website, as the carrier of our survey. The best
feature of this survey website is its usability. We could easily create various types of questions
and modify them. Furthermore, using Qualtrics to create an online survey does not require any
knowledge about web programming.
After finalizing our online survey questions, we sent them to UIUC students. We initially
planned to send the online survey through the Division of Management Information at UIUC
However, at this time, the university was working on another survey with a higher priority than
ours. Consequently, we had to find an alternative way to recruit people. Thus, we enlisted
students using a convenience sample, which meant each researcher in ACE 471 contributing an
e-mail list of their friends or people who are willing to participate. Professor Arends-Kuenning
the pooled all of our e-mails together and eliminated those duplicates. Further, we protocoled the
e-mail that introduced ourselves and explained the subject we are discussing. We also added the
link to the survey at the end of the e-mail. Furthermore, each group sent the e-mail to their
friends using the email list and kept an eye on the results.
By using a survey that pooled all of the other questions, we could make more people
respond. If each group conducted their online survey separately, the research would have been
constrained by a small sample. Therefore, pooling together questions and sending them to our
friends helped diversify our sample. As students in ACE 471 are already diversified, for example
by race and academic standing, their friends who take the survey would also be representative of
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students at UIUC. However, the problem within this method was moral hazard. Students may
think that their classmates would recruit a large number of people to take the survey and thus,
they put forth little effort to find people to participate in the research project. If most students
thought this way we would witness a deficiency of respondents for our survey, and that is exactly
what we experienced. In addition, since many participants are also student majoring in
Agricultural and Consumer Economics, we expected to see a larger portion of student from
ACES in our online survey.
Findings
Findings from focus groups
For the focus groups we had a range of students from sophomores to seniors. We also had
a diversity of majors, which included Computer Science, Accountancy, Agriculture and
Consumer Economics, Economics, Chemistry, Statistics, and Mechanical Engineering.
Analyzing the results for the focus groups was relatively simple. The answers seemed to agree
unanimously throughout the focus groups. While everyone in the focus groups agreed on the
concept of what they said for the questions, there were different reasons for some of what they
agreed on. For question 1, we asked what the overall impression was of the housing at UIUC.
Overall, all the responses for this question was mixed between positive and negative, however,
they did have different opinions on why. The subject that came up for everyone was distance and
quality/price. While some said that distance-wise, the housing options were good because they
were located close to their classes, while others said that it was an issue because living off
campus sometimes brought problems with getting to class. Another factor was quality/price—
some respondents said that the quality varied depending on price and that there was poor quality
17
housing. One person mentioned that compared to their other school, the options here were better
and more affordable.
Question 2 deals with the factors that influenced their choices when it came to choosing a
place to live. What everyone agreed on was that price, quality, and location were the factors that
were the most influential in choosing a place to live. Additionally, in the first focus group one
person said that along with those factors listed above, service also influenced her. The person
said that they liked the fast response when they need something fixed or replaced. In the second
focus group, they also said that roommates play a part in choosing accommodation. Question 3
was about where they were living and how they felt about their current living condition.
Everyone in both focus groups answered that they lived off-campus in a private housing
apartment. Except for one person, everyone was satisfied with where they were living as the
overall living space was bigger and more private.
Question 4 required the participants to give us what they think are some pros and con
about living on-campus and off-campus. When it came to living on-campus, there were one or
two positive responses; however, opinions were mostly negative. Good points were that the
dormitories are closer to classes, than the apartments and that they did not have to worry about
cooking or cleaning. However, one of the biggest negatives that they provided was that that there
was almost no privacy in the dormitories because they shared a room with a roommate and a
bathroom with the whole floor. Another issue that they had was that on-campus living was really
expensive compared to off-campus accommodation. The respondents also had an issue with how
small the living space was—one participant had a very negative opinion about it. He said, “ I can
share a communal space, but a bedroom should be personal. I don’t know any other institution
like that other than prison”.
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When asked about any positives and negatives when it came to living off-campus, the
responses were a lot more positive: they had more privacy as they got their own rooms; they
could choose who they lived rather than with an assigned roommate; they could eat what they
want because they have a kitchen to cook in and did not need to concern themselves with the
meal plans. Even though there were positives, there were also some negatives: it was somewhat
dangerous to walk home at night if they lived from campus, and they had to wake up earlier so
sometimes not going to class became tempting.
We also had a question regarding what they thought of roommates. From the responses it
seemed that generally students felt positively about the roommates that they had chosen. Those
roommates were friends or had the same interests as the focus group participants. While some
assigned roommates were thought to be ok, others were problematic. Lastly for questions related
to housing we asked how they paid for rent, such as with a part-time job. The responses indicated
that mostly everyone was supported by their parents. One respondent had a part-time job during
the semester, but he also had some help from his parents. Another had a part time job during the
summer to make money.
After the questions on housing, we started discussing academic performance.
Considerable influences on academic performance were roommates, environment, and study
method. The way that they study was something that we were interested in for our research,
therefore, we asked how and where they preferred to study. While they favored studying in
groups, studying alone was more efficient, mostly because if you study in a group of friends you
are more likely to get distracted. Preferred study location was split between the
library/laboratories and their rooms. When we asked directly if they thought whether any factors
of housing have an impact on academic performance, the following three factors were proposed:
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if you are farther away from campus your willingness to go to class diminishes and that there
may be inconveniences when it comes to transportation; a roommate can be a distraction or a
motivator; the environment was also something that mattered because it could be a big
distraction if the street is a busy or a quiet one. After we examined what the focus groups
responded, we turned our attention to the responses from the online survey.
Findings of Online Survey
After retrieving data from our online survey, we used Stata and Excel to analysis and
interpret our results. As we had used a pool of online survey questions, there was some irrelevant
information in our feedback. As a result of that, we only chose to analyze some of the questions.
Primarily, we used Stata to run regressions on some variables to see if they have significant
influences on a student’s academic performance. We mainly used Excel to graph figures to show
the differences across groups. We would use the rest of this section to show those findings and
give our own justification to explain the reason behind the phenomenon.
Before we were able to analyze the impact of housing arrangement in depth, our research team
did some basic statistical analysis on the data. First, we wanted to see if there is a difference
among students with different academic standings. As UIUC students have to stay in the
residential halls for their freshmen year and most of them move out to other of types of housing
afterwards, we wanted to investigate whether staying in the dormitory has a significant positive
or negative impact on a student’s GPA. Figure 1 shows a bar chart of average GPA and student’s
academic standing that we made from the raw data.
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Figure 1:
Table 1:
Freshmen
Sophomore
Junior
Senior
GPA
3.72
3.41
3.51
3.53
Obs
7
19
30
47
The figure 1 shows that UIUC students’ GPA varies significantly with different academic
standing. The freshmen group had the highest GPA of 3.72 out of 4, while sophomore group had
the lowest GPA of 3.41, and the senior class had an average GPA of 3.53. Our result passed the
unpaired t-test at α = 0.05 significance level and we can conclude that sophomore and freshmen
GPA results are different from other groups. This result is consistent with what we thought
before our research.
As we found that there is a large gap between freshmen and sophomore results, and based
on the fact that UIUC first-year students are required to live on campus, we wondered if living in
21
the dormitory would have a large positive impact on student’s academic performance. Thus, we
made a survey based on different housing options (Figure 2; Table 2)
Figure 2:
Table 2:
University
Housing
Fraternity/Sorority
House
Apartment on
Campus
Apartment off
Campus
Other type of
Houses
GPA
3.74
3.32
3.49
3.74
3.43
Obs
14
21
8
45
14
From Figure 2 and Table 2, we noticed that students living in the dormitory have the
highest average GPA, while people living in fraternity houses have the lowest. We thought that
living in the residential hall will be more convenient because students can live closer to their
classes and do not need worry about catering problems as compared to other housing
arrangements. For instance, student living in dormitories are required to buy meal plans, which
can save time compared to cooking. Furthermore, these factors can boost a student’s GPA.
However, we cannot deny the importance of class easiness level for first-year students. For
instance, UIUC students need to take many introductory level classes and other general
22
education classes during the first two years of college life, which are relatively easy as compared
to other higher-level classes or major coursework. However, as we found that there is large gap
between these two groups of students and the major difference between them is living in the
dormitory or not, it is rational to believe that living in the dormitory will have a positive impact.
Although there are some negative impressions of university housing, these are still
outweighed by larger benefits. Most of the university certificated housing provides rooms that
two students have to share. Although students can request to live with one specific person, most
students live with someone they have never met before. This may cause problems as people
coming from different social backgrounds will have different living habits, which may interfere
with their roommates’ studying. The second factor might be peer effects within the room. As the
space in the university dormitories is quite small, there is little privacy between two people living
together, and their behaviors are fully exposed to each other. For instance, one student may be
addicted to playing video games and his roommate may gradually become interested in that
game, which may cause a negative impact on that student’s academic performance. However,
based on our findings, those impacts are not significant.
Further, we examined the difference on GPA for students’ living in different types of
housing. According to the empirical evidence, we believed that students living in fraternity
houses would tend to have a lower GPA. We also wanted to know whether other kinds of
housing will have an impact or not.
Based on the raw data we obtained from our online survey, we were able to summarize
the portion of students living in different types of housing. We found that almost half of students
in our sample lived off campus (38.41 percent); 23.91 percent of students lived in fraternity
houses; followed by university housing and apartments on campus (18.84 percent and 7.25
23
percent, respectively); and 11.59 of students lived in other kinds of housing. This finding is
consistent with our empirical belief, as there are not many places on campus, and most students
choose to leave their residence halls after the first year.
Since we found the students live in fraternity house have a lower GPA, we became
interested in the GPA of fraternity members. So we tested them as below (table 3):
Table 3:
Groups
Obs
Mean
Std. Err.
Std. Dev.
95% Conf. Interval
Nonfraternity
member
81
3.567778
0.0374817
0.3373352
3.493187
3.642369
Fraternity
member
21
3.315714
0.0990372
0.4538455
3.109126
3.522302
Combined
102
3.515882
0.0372344
0.3760486
3.442019
3.589745
0.2520635
0.1058926
0.0344007
0.4697263
Diff
Diff = Mean(fraternity) - Mean(other
types housing)
t= 2.3804
H0: Diff=0
Satterthwaite's degrees of freedom = 26.0062
Ha: diff <
0
Ha: diff !=
0
Ha: diff >
0
Pr(T < t) = 0.9875
Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0249
Pr(T > t) = 0.0125
From the unpaired two-group mean-comparison t-test chart, we are able to conclude that
students who live in fraternity houses indeed have lower grades than other groups. This finding is
coordinated with the previous research (De Los Reyes & Rich, 2003). We believe that students
living in a fraternity house are less constrained by rules that people in the residential halls follow.
Thus, they may spend more time attending parties, socializing with members from other
fraternities and sororities, which may reduce the time available for them to do their coursework.
24
Then our research team explored the relationship between roommate impact, roommates
number, room quality and a student’s GPA. For these variables, we used the expected GPA for
the semester as our dependant variable. Since our survey was filled close to the end of the
semester, students usually have a relatively accurate estimation of their GPA for the semester.
And the expected GPA is also much more related to the student's’ GPA and their current living
situation for this semester. Thus, the expected GPA can be a good indicator of students’
academic performance. We used Stata to calculate the mean expected GPA for each category and
made a bar chart on that.
Figure 3:
Table 4:
Large
negative
effect
Somewhat
negative
effect
No effect
impact
Some
positive
effect
Large
positive
effect
Expected
GPA
4
3.55
3.65
3.62
3.33
Obs
1
27
28
34
9
25
We primarily assume roommates’ distraction activities would influence students’ GPA.
From the bar chart (figure 3) we show above, we roughly see there may be a negative
relationship between roommates impact and the GPA. But due to the survey sample is not large
enough, like the amount of people filled the large negative impact was only 1. Relatively, the
sample result may not be able to concluded as reliable. So to test it, we ran a regression test by
STATA, we got the p-value is 0.83 which is really not significant. After got this result, we
combined with the response from focus groups to find out why there is no distinct relationship
between the roommates behavior and the GPA. Finally, we concluded it as students after their
freshmen year, tended to choose their friends be their roommates. As some of our focus group
participants said, this kind of living situation is satisfied. Even though, some of roommates may
distract study, students always have many alternative places to study, like library and coffee
shops.
Our research team then explored the relation between the number of roommates and a
student’s GPA. We used Stata to calculate the mean GPA for each category and made a chart on
that (Figure 4, Table 5).
Figure 4:
26
Table 5:
Number of
roommates
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Expected
GPA
3.53
3.61
3.71
3.56
3.52
3.63
3.60
Obs
12
45
19
34
12
4
2
From the data we found that most students tend to live with either one or three
roommates as two- and four-bedroom apartments are the most popular types of housing on
campus. Moreover, we collected some unrealistic data on the number of roommates (such as 11,
12, and 50). We believe those numbers may be entered by mistake as there is no apartment on
campus that has the capacity to accommodate such a great number of people. As a consequence
of that, we did not include those values in the chart.
We found from the figure 4, there is no obvious linear relationship between the number
of roommate and the GPA. This is also explained by the reason, that most of the students stay
with their friends, and they have more choices to be a study place.
Figure 5:
27
Table 6:
Expected
GPA
Obs
Very poor (1)
Poor (2)
Fair (3)
Good (4)
3.5
3.66
3.62
3.56
Very good
(5)
3.53
1
9
33
37
27
As we made an assumption before, living standard varies, it would result in different
outcomes of students GPA. After proceeded the survey data, we got the mean GPA located in
different groups. Look the graph had been showed above this paragraph, we can see that as the
numbers grow, the standard living level becomes higher. We found that the curve was raising
when the living level from 1 to 2, which was very poor to poor. Then it turns down until the
curve reaches the level 5, which is very good housing quality with a relatively lower GPA.
Though students’ GPA tends to decline between the poor quality and fair groups, we assume
they are quite similar, both with a very high GPA. Thus, we concluded that housing quality has a
positive impact while we improve from a very lower level. But it has a negative impact when we
keep improving the housing quality after the quality reached one point. We explain this point is a
point for the living standard could be able to satisfy students with basic requirements. Before
reaching this satisfaction point, students might have problems with the basic living situation like
they have to worry about where to wash clothes, etc. But after your housing reaches this point,
and becomes further improved, there is more entertainment service offered for you, and more
activities around you, they both could be the distraction for your study. However, our regression
result show there is a negative relationship between roommates number
Then our group examined the effects of housing distance on a student’s academic
performance. Since people will have difficulties in telling the concrete number of miles, we
28
decide to ask the time they spent on transportation daily, which can be a rough estimation of the
distance on average (Figure 6).
Figure 6:
Table 7:
< 5 mins
5 - 10 mins
11 -15 mins
16 - 20 mins
21 -30 mins
GPA
3.67
3.52
3.41
3.57
3.26
Obs
11
43
36
13
2
Results from the survey meet our expectations. Students who live further will spend a
longer time on transportation and tend to have a lower GPA than those closer. Although the
fourth group has a high GPA, we conclude this is a result from the sample being too small.
29
The justification behind this phenomenon is that students live further tends to have less
control on their schedule. For instance, when a student choose to drive to school with a time
length of 30 minutes, this person may encounter traffic congestions, limited parking lot and other
events, which can lead to being tardy. On the contrary, student who live on campus may just
spend 5 minutes and walk to their class, which gives students an adequate control of their
schedule.
Furthermore, our group tested the relation between GPA and the extent that parents are
responsible for students’ tuition and housing. In Stata, we used tabstat q52, by(q21) stats(count
mean) to measure the difference in GPA among different groups (Figure 7).
Figure 7:
Table 8:
Not at all
A little
Half
Majority
All
GPA
3.26
3.35
3.39
3.50
3.59
Obs
5
4
10
34
51
30
From Figure 7, it is clear that as the level of parental support on housing increases, the
student's' GPA also increases. This result is highly significant at a significance level of α = 5%.
Students whose parents pay for all their housing fees have the highest average GPA; however,
the group that does not receive any support from their parents has the lowest GPA, which is
significantly lower than other groups. This result is consistent with the hypotheses that our group
proposed previously. A student must find his or her own alternative to pay for the rent if that
individual’s parents do not pay for it at all. Thus, the student might need to find a part-time job
or take a student loan. If the student takes a part-time job, he or she will need to work extra hours
after school, which will result in an inadequate amount of time for the student to study. Thus, it
is rational to expect this person to acquire a lower GPA. Furthermore, if a student needs to pay
for all the housing rents and other fees, this person might choose to live in a low-cost place,
which usually is low-quality or is inconvenient for the student. All those justifications can
explain the phenomena that the first group of students have a lower GPA on average.
However, running regression on one variable also has problems. We omitted the effects
from other variables when doing a regression, which need to be controlled to ensure the validity
of the result. For instance, when talking about parental support, we need to make other factors
constant. Thus, elimination of other variable is needed when running the regression. The method
we used is to run a regression based on all variables we think may have impacts on students
GPA. The following is our result (table 9):
31
Table 9:
Regression test for different variables to students GPA
R-squared: 0.3254
F(13, 76)=2.82
Obs: 90
Variable
Coef.
t
P>|t|
Number of roommates
0.0125809
0.0358123
0.35
Housing quality
0.0014385
0.04
0.969
Parents support (1 to 5 increasing
support level)
0.0713576
2.26
0.026
Frequency of using public
transportation
0.0583692
2.13
0.036
Time spent on going to class
-0.0706628
-1.69
0.095
Study time
0.0023154
0.95
0.344
entertainment activities time
-5.15E-06
-1.47
0.145
Frequency of skip class weekly
-0.0285901
-0.73
0.467
Academic year
0.0005368
0.01
0.988
Fraternity member (1) or not (2)
0.1969792
2.65
0.01
cons
2.894652
9.9
0
*Parents support from 1 to 5 as increasing support level
* fraternity member represented by 1, non-fraternity member represented by 2
Policy Implication
Although the regression result shows that student living the dorm tend to have the highest
GPA among all groups, most students in our focus groups have a negative impression on
university housing. The majority of students in our focus group thinks the drom is not
comfortable and since their roommates are randomly assigned, there might be some conflicts
32
between them. Thus, we suggest the school keep the new policy of choosing roommates
themselves when in the dorms. That way the student ultimately has the choice of who they live
with whether its with someone they know or a new person and also what residence hall they
want to stay at. This would work better instead of being randomly assigned a room and having
no control.
In addition, as mentioned in our focus group, most students think the cost for living in
dorms is higher than living outside, which is not cost-efficient. However, when we compared the
mean GPA for those who are not freshmen but still live in the dorm and student live out of the
dorm, we found there is a big different. Thus, living in dorm can have positive impact on a
student’s GPA and it will be a mutual benefit to both the university and students if the housing
department can lower the rate for the dorm in order to retain students. Although living in dorm
has some defects, it provides students with a great convenience and has a positive impact on
students’ GPA.
Another side we discovered, about the GPA distribution in different types of housing for
non freshmen students. Since freshmen are mandatorily required to live in dorm. From our test
result based on STATA, we found that (Figure 8):
Figure 8:
33
The non-freshmen students’ GPA in a dorm is quite larger than living in other types of
housing. We could say living in the dorm might give students after freshmen year a positive
impact.
But students after freshmen year are likely to go out of dorms. Due to the school dorm
charging policy to students, it makes the high price but offers a relatively unpaired quality of
housing service. So our suggestions are giving some reduction of housing price, then improve the
housing quality somehow and advance the dining service.
Study Limitations
At the beginning of the focus group, we decided to conduct 3 or more groups to get them
involved in our research. Our ideal participants’ constitution would like to be a combination of
students with different standing years, different regions, and living locations. But in reality, due
to two of our group members are senior international students, almost two-thirds of participants
are international students with junior or senior standing. And for the limitation of social
networking, a large part of them are currently live in one apartment place. This skewed
34
participants distribution in standing year, regions and locations make the focus group not be
strong enough to conclude the precise result for our research.
With regard to the survey questions, at December 7, 2015, the number of participants is
less than 200, which could not count as a large sample. If we take a look at the distribution of
several factors, we will find they are not close to the reality in population of the students in
UIUC. Table 10 shows a comparison of the college enrolled students distribution in our survey
with the structure of the whole UIUC.
Table 10
% in survey
% in UIUC
ACES
18.42
8.11
BUS
14.91
9.43
ENG
21.93
22.97
LAS
28.95
34.98
FAA
1.75
4.60
EDU
0
1.84
DGS
5.26
8.49
Media
3.51
3.11
College of Applied Health
Science
4.39
5.79
Other
0.88
11.01
In our study, we find that the proportion of ACES and Business College are quite larger
than the same categories in reality, however, the Engineering and LAS are smaller, and
particularly the percentage shown under the “Other” category reveals a huge difference with the
population proportion. This is because our survey was not sent by UIUC officials, but by us, and
35
we do not have access to have a large official sample pool. We distributed the survey through
social networking sites and to randomly selected people, which ineluctably turns the sample to
be a kind of convenient sample. That is why most of the participants are from ACES and
Business College, who are related to our study field and social network.
Equivalently, the gender and race distribution in the survey are also biased: 68.42% male
and 31.8% female participants; and 0% African Americans, 67.74% Caucasians, 26.88% Asian,
5.38% Hispanic or Latino, and 0% Native Americans. It is clear that the data sample contains a
lack of females, African Americans, and Native Americans, and shows us that sample limitation
exists.
Conclusion
During the fall semester, our research team members contributed to a structured focus
group and survey questions, conducted and arranged focus groups, sent surveys via several ways
to gather answers in as many ways as possible, and collected data and assessed them. The
feedback and datasets from focus groups and survey were meaningful to our research, and we
appreciate all efforts made by our participants. Some of the responses proved our assumptions,
however, the rest tells us that things are not like we expected. We accepted all results, and we are
willing to share them with more people. As our essential goal was conducting a research that
could help our friends and campus students around us, the research population was restricted to
UIUC students. We hope our work is helpful for the students in UIUC.
Combined with the focus group and survey answers, we found that some results are
mismatched with our expectations. First, we expected that roommates participating in disruptive
behaviors would have some negative influence on students’ GPA. However, according to the
36
information from the focus group, some of the participants have roommates that like to party or
play games that would interrupt study activities, but most of the participants are living with
friends, thus they know each other and do not get into trouble with the disruption. After
preceding the survey data, we also found that few people thought roommates had a negative
impact. Additionally, the GPA of the students with disruptive roommates was not significantly
different. As we learned from focus groups and survey questions, students have various places to
study and could either choose to do so at home or go to libraries. As most of the students are able
to choose whom to stay with, whether in an apartment or one room, the negative effects might
not be revealed among roommates.
Our second hypothesis is the distance of living housing has a negative relationship with
students’ GPA. Tested by our data, we found there is a downward trendline among groups as the
distance turns to be further. Cooperated with the responses from focus groups, we summarize the
negative relationship happens, because living further results students spend more time on going
to the classes, going back home, and sometimes for the students own a car living off campus, it is
hard to find a parking slot.
For our third hypothesis, we originally assume that standard of living impacts students’
GPA. We were not sure about what kind of impact it should be, positive or negative. finally, we
found that there is no linear relationship between different levels of housing quality. Both
regression test and scatter plot told us. But after the further study, we found that the quality of
housing had two opposite direction depends whether the quality fulfil residents’ requirements.
With the poor quality housing, which couldn’t satisfy the basic living standard. It showed a
positive relationship as quality became higher and GPA turned to be higher. After a point, the
37
standard of living is higher than basic needs, housing quality improvement presented a negative
impact.
We also concentrated on figuring out how students being responsible for rents affect
GPA. We tested the different levels of parental support by running the regression test. Finally we
got the answer which is statistically significant. In other words, larger portion of parents support
on their university spending could represents the less stress on rent paying. So the data showed
the higher level students being responsible for rents, the lower GPA might appear. We concluded
this relationship due to the students being responsible for rents give them more stress, more
worries.
At the beginning of the research, our group think students living in dorms and fraternity
houses would gain a lower GPA than others. Finally, after the research, we found that students
living in dorms were accompanying the higher, even we subtract the freshmen factor, the GPA of
students who were living in dorms still showed a higher performance. But the fraternity housing
exactly impacts students with a lower GPA.
For future study, we suggest to focus on why living in the dorm gives student a better
academic performance. Since it is there is a quite large gap on GPA between students living in
the residence halls who have a higher academic standing and who are freshmen. The mechanism
behind is still worthy to be explored.
38
References
De Los Reyes, G., & Rich, P. (2003). Housing Students: Fraternities and Residential Colleges.
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 585, 118–123.
Forquer, L. M., Camden, A. E., Gabriau, K. M., & Johnson, C. M. (2008). Sleep Patterns of
College Students at a Public University. Journal of American College Health, 56(5), 563565.
Hall, R. L., & Willerman, B.. (1963). The Educational Influence of Dormitory
Roommates.Sociometry, 26(3), 294–318.
Kremer, M., & Levy, D. (2008). Peer Effects and Alcohol Use among College Students. Journal
Of Economic Perspectives, 22(3), 189-206. doi:10.1257/jep.22.3.189
Sacerdote, B. (2001). Peer Effect with Random Assignment: Result For
Dartmouth Roommates. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(2), 681-704.
doi:10.1162/00335530151144131
39
Appendix
Email from the UIUC Housing Office:
FW: HSG-FW: Student request for interview - Oscar Albarran
FW: HSG-FW: Student request for interview - Oscar Albarran
Actions
Brocker Curry, Mari Anne ([email protected])
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Oscar,
I apologize for my delayed response. I have provided some quick answers below. Please let me know
if you need to me to elaborate on any of these.
Mari Anne Brocker Curry
Associate Director of Housing
Housing Information Office
UNIVERSITY HOUSING | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Mail: 100 Clark Hall, MC-548 | Office: 100 Clark Hall
1203 S. Fourth Street | Champaign, IL 61820-6982
Phone: (217) 333-7111 | Fax: (217) 244-7073
[email protected] | www.housing.illinois.edu
NOTE: Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), any written communication to or from University
employees regarding University business is a public record and may be subject to public disclosure.
*Please consider the environment before printing this email.
41
HSG-INBOX FORWARDED EMAIL
From: Oscar Albarran
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2015 12:26 AM
To: Housing Information Office <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Research paper
Mr. Maldonado,
here are the questions that we wanted to ask for our paper.
Questions:
1. what is your name and position?
Mari Anne Brocker Curry
Assoc. Director, Housing Information Office
2. what are your job responsibilities?
Oversee the Office that provides University Owned Residence Hall & Private Certified housing options
for students.
3. how does university determine the semesterly rent for residence halls?
We calculate a per night cost based on the number of nights in a semester and the cost to provide
programs and services. (room and meals, plus value added things like on call staff and academic
programs)
4. what are the policies that protect students’ safety in residence halls?
We have security and access committees that continuously evaluate the policies that are related to
safety. Card access, key check out, solicitation, escorted guests, security patrol, beginning of the
semester fire and life protocol meetings, and security cameras are just a few of the things that
housing does to protect students.
42
5. how are roommates assigned in residences hall?
Students pick their own room via self-assignment. They can find friends outside of the online
application and find a room together or they can use the roommate profile questions within the
application to search, message, and request roommates. Students can also choose to receive a
random roommate by placing themselves in an occupied room or choosing a vacant room where
someone will eventually fill the 2ns space.
6. how do you evaluate amenities provided by university residence halls?
Student feedback, market trends, and cost to the student
7. how’s the current utilization status of dorms? In other words, how many rooms are vacant
currently? percentage?
We opened the fall semester at 100% we except 3-5% drop for 2nd semester due to students
graduating, studying abroad, etc.
8. Why,, in your opinion, do students move out of university provided housing after their first
year in college?
Our exit surveys have consistently cited the following as reasons they leave:
Room and board price is too high
Quality of life/social/noise/policies/RA
Just time/ready to move on
Want independence
Greek live-in requirement
Leaving University
Amenities
43
9. what aspects of university residence halls do you think can effectively attract students
students to live there?
Students list the following as reasons they stay in our surveys:
Location
Community atmosphere
Other cost considerations
Roommate
Other
New Constant Rate Program
Parent/guardian
Dining options
Living-Learning Community
Safety/security
Quality of facilities
Physical environment
Computer labs
Leadership opportunities
10. What problems do residents usually come up to complain?
Roommate conflicts, wireless internet are on a radar right now but those vary depending on the time
of year and the building.
11. Could you please share some data about the GPA on students live in dorms?
44
The best academic stat I have to share is:
Students who live in University Housing for more than one year are more likely to graduate, and
graduate in 4 years, than student who moves out after their first year.
12. what’s the race distribution among university housing? In other words, do different races
have different preference?
We do not assign by race or ethnicity. This year with self-assignment, students chose from available
space. With the change in process, our in-room diversity actually increased slightly from last year’s
statistics.
13. what problems residents have on their academic performance while living in dorms?
We have very supportive environments for academic performance. I am not sure our residents would
experience different problems than any other student. In fact, I might expect that they would
experience fewer problems.
14. How do you think living in dorms gives residents a positive effect on academic
performance?
There are a ton of resources! Study space, quiet hours, tutors, group study rooms, libraries, computer
labs, course for credit offered in the residence halls, additional programs like writer’s workshops and
resume building etc. Some of our Living Learning communities have even more access to professors,
class room space, and programming. Plus we take care of the cooking, cleaning and shopping so
students have more time to learn and grow.
Also included is the consent form so that we can use the information in out paper.
Thanks again,
Oscar Albarran
45
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Research paper
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 18:35:40 +0000
Oscar,
Thank you for your interest in University Housing information. Our class media contacts
are typically available by appointment only; however, Wednesday at 3:00pm is not a time
that works for their schedules.
Is it possible for you to send your questions so the Associate Director for Housing
Information can answer them via email?
Kindly,
Jason Maldonado
Office Manager
UNIVERSITY HOUSING | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Mail: 100 Clark Hall, MC-548 | Office: 100 Clark Hall
1203 S. Fourth Street | Champaign, IL 61820-6982
Phone: (217) 333-7111 | Fax: (217) 244-7073
[email protected] | www.housing.illinois.edu
NOTE: Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), any written communication to or from
University employees regarding University business is a public record and may be subject to
public disclosure.
*Please consider the environment before printing this email.
From: Oscar Albarran
46
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2015 9:09 PM
To: Housing Information Office <[email protected]>
Subject: Research paper
Hi,
My group mates and I are doing a research paper for our ACE471 class on housing and we were hoping
to ask a couple questions. Can we come anytime during office hours or do we need to have an
appointment. if we do need an appointment is Wednesday at 3:00pm available?
Thanks
Oscar Albarran
47
Consent form for Email Interview and Focus groups:
(Email Version of Informed Consent Document for interviews via email/phone by student
researchers)
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Ethnography of the University Initiative: Student Research
Informed Consent
Description and Purpose of the Research
________________________________________________ is conducting research to
STUDENT RESEARCHER’S NAME
fulfill requirements for a college course titled
______________________________________________________________________.
COURSE RUBRIC, NUMBER, SECTION, TITLE
The general purpose of ethnographic research is to learn how members of a community
(for example, students in a club or employees in a dining hall) make sense of their own
community and its relationships with other people, communities, and institutions.
Ethnography is a kind of research commonly done by scholars in social science fields like
Anthropology. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to respond to this email with
this form attached.
Voluntary Nature of Participation
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Participation in this research is completely voluntary. If you are a UIUC student, you may
participate, decline, or withdraw from participation without any effect on your grades at,
status at, or future relations with this institution or the University of Illinois. You may
withdraw from this study at any time. To withdraw, contact the student researcher.
Participants in all EUI-affiliated research must be at least 18 years of age.
Confidentiality
In this study, every effort will be made not to reveal personally identifiable information in
publications based on this research. To accomplish this, no records will be created or
retained that could link you to personally identifiable descriptions, paraphrases, or
quotations. Your actions or things you say may be presented without specific reference to
you, reference only by pseudonym, or combined anonymously with the actions and words
of other participants.
Risks and Benefits
Your participation in this project should not involve risks beyond those of ordinary life.
Although student researcher will protect the confidentiality of your response to the extent
possible, please be aware that for those being interviewed via email, that Email is not
considered to be a secure format. You will not be paid for your participation in this
research project, nor is it expected that your participation will bring you any benefits,
tangible or otherwise. It is hoped that the student researcher named above will benefit
from this project by learning how to do college-level, ethnographic research.
Contact Information
If you have any questions, concerns, or complaints about this research project, please
contact the Responsible Project Investigator (RPI) or Project Investigators (PI):
Nancy Abelmann, Anthropology, 217-244-1867 or [email protected] (RPI)
Sharon Irish, GSLIS, 217-300-1921 or [email protected] (PI)
Karen Rodriguez'G, Ethnography of the University Initiative, 217-244-7733 or
[email protected] (PI)
If you have any questions about your rights as a participant in this study, please contact the
University of Illinois Institutional Review Board at Suite 203, 528 East Green Street
Champaign, IL 61820, 217-333-2670 (You may call collect if you identify yourself as a
research subject) or via email at [email protected].
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Consent Statement
If you agree to be interviewed via email/phone, please return this email consent form with
your name typed in below.
I, [please type in your name] have read and understood this consent document and agree to
be interviewed via email or phone.
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