Findings
The research question was “How happy are students this semester at Longwood University in relation to the guest policy the university has in place”. The independent variable survey question for this research is “On a scale from 0-10, how satisfied are you with your overall college experience this semester?” The dependent variable question is “The guest policy prohibits family and visitors from visiting campus housing. It also prohibits fellow students from visiting Longwood managed housing they do not reside in (for example, if you live in Stubbs you cannot visit the Landings). Do you support the guest policy at Longwood University?”
The dependent variable is how students felt about the guest policy. Respondents answered “yes,” “no,” “maybe” and “does not apply”. The independent variable is a self-evaluation of their satisfaction this semester at Longwood with scale rating from 0 (extremely dissatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied). My hypothesis for these questions are that the mean score of students that are happy this semester will be lower than the mean of if they agree with the guest policy.
The dependent variable shows that 182, or 42%, of the respondents stated that they were against the guest policy. 93 students, or 21% of the respondents, said that they were okay with the guest policy. 90 students, or 20% of the respondents, stated “maybe” which means that are okay with some aspects of the policy. Then 46 students, or 11%, said this question does not apply to them because they are not attending classes on campus at this time. Lastly, 22 students, or 1%, did not answer this question.
Table 1
How students are feeling about the Guest Policy
Guest Policy Count Percent
Yes 93 21%
No 182 42%
Maybe 90 20%
Does Not Apply 46 11%
Note. N=432
My Independent variable shows that the mean score was 4.91. The standard deviation for the table is 2.65. This means that 68% of students answered between 2.26 and 7.57. When people said they were happy with their overall experience this semester, the trend is pointing downwards below a five. A little more than half of the respondents said that they were dissatisfied with how their semester is going. Since our scaling system starts with zero, the median number of the scale would be 5.5. More students were dissatisfied than satisfied.
The correlation of my dependent variable and my independent variable shows that the students that answered “no” for if they agree with the guest policy, also put a lower score of 4.43 for if they are happy this semester at Longwood. Students who answered with any of the other answer choices for “if they agree with the guest policy” scored much higher than the ones who said they “did not,” as well as the mean score for “if they were happy this semester”.
Table 2
Mean scores of how students are enjoying this semester
Answer Mean
Yes 5.23
No 4.43
Maybe 5.30
Does not apply 5.13
Note. =432
The first test I conducted was the t-test. This test was run to see if there were any significant difference between the means from the happiness scale question and the question on whether you agree with the guest policy or not.
Table 3
Independent Samples T-Test of Students’ Happiness This Semester Caused by the Guest Policy
Guest Policy N Means SD T Df P
Yes Guest 93 5.23 2.703 -1.289 143.87 0.2057
No Guest 338 4.83 2.639
N=431, Note: P> 0.05*, P>0.01**, P>0.001***
In this sample, the variable was recoded to assume all answers that were not “No” as “Yes”. This test shows that according to the calculated t score compared to the critical value, that there is nothing significant at the 0.05 level of significance. The average means between students that are for and those against is not large enough to warrant significant findings. Both groups however, scored below the statistical average of the self-evaluation of happiness. This means that even if the guest policy was not the issue for dissatisfaction, other factors at Longwood were.
The ANOVA test was created and calculated to show the difference in the average mean scores of students who had taken the survey. The variable was recoded into three separate categories consisting of “Yes”, “No”, and “Maybe”.
Table 4
ANOVA Test on How Happy Students are this Semester Based upon the Guest Policy
Guest Means F Value Pr
Yes 5.226 2.615* 0.0348
No 4.433
Maybe 5.300
N= 426, Note: p< 0.05*, p<0.01**, p<0.001***
According to the test, there is a significant difference at the 0.05 level of critical values. The means show for the students who answer “No” on whether they agreed or disagreed with the guest policy is drastically lower than those who agree with the policy. The scores of the students who said “Maybe” is just slightly higher than the ones who said “Yes” because students who did not answer and those who said “Does not apply were coded in the “Maybe” bracket.
The chi- square crosstabulation test was done to see the percentage number of students that rated themselves happy or not compared to how they felt about the guest policy at Longwood University. The variable that shows whether students disagree or agree with the guest policy was recoded into three different categories: Yes, No, and Maybe. The happiness variable was also recoded into two categories: 0 through 5 were labelled as “Not Happy” and 6 through 10 were labelled as “Happy”.
Table 3
Chi- Squared Test Crosstabulation to See if Students are Happy
Happiness
Guest Policy Not Happy Happy Total
Maybe 18.6% 23.6% 20.9%
No 48.3% 33.8% 41.8%
Yes 20.8% 22.6% 21.6%
Chi Square 11.299*
N= 431 Note: p< 0.05, p< 0.01, p< 0.001
The table above shows only the students who answered “Maybe,” “No,” and “Yes”. In the survey. While the percentages do not equal 100, almost 42% of respondents said that they were not in favor of Longwoods guest policy. Furthermore, out of those 42% of students, 49% of them labeled themselves as not happy this semester. This means around 180 students are unhappy at Longwood University, purely because of the guest policy in place. Only around 20% of all students said they were both happy with the guest policy and happy generally. Most students who took this survey were either not happy at Longwood, disagreed with the guest policy, or because they disagreed with the policy it was what made them unhappy. The findings in this table show the chi- square correlation is significant at the 0.05 level of critical value.
Conclusion
These quantitative findings show information on how students feel about Longwood and their impressions. The campus has rated themselves according to their experience this semester and they rated themselves poorly. Almost half of the students who took the survey said that they were not happy here at Longwood, and even more said that they were not happy because of the guest policy Longwood has in place. Longwood University needs to be aware and understand the statistics presented here if they want to continue to make money as a university and provide a fulfilling experience for its students. No matter the cause of the students’ dissatisfaction, the university should want to reach out to its students and ask the population what would make their lives at Longwood University better.
All of the findings were significant except for the t-test. The t-test only had two variables present in the table, “Yes” and “No”. The other two tables had one other variable included, “Maybe”. This shows that the “Maybe” variable does make a difference and that coding can make the difference in findings being significant or not. The students who answered “Maybe” were recoded into the “No” variable list in the first table, t-test. Due to this recoding, the findings then became not significant. Most researchers just gloss over the maybe variable in survey answers because they usually do not have any significance to how the results turn out. This study proves that the “Maybe” answer does matter because the addition of that made these findings significant.