Professional Documents
Culture Documents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary.......3
Introduction........3
Research Method....4
Description.........7
Conclusion ........8
Limitations ....8
Recommendations..........9
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A. Executive Summary
This report was written to provide an evaluation and analysis of the current housing crisis
at Iowa State University, and why students choose to live where they do. The methods of
analysis include primary and secondary research. Primary research involves a survey
research is comprised of information gathered regarding the current housing options. The
preference, and geographic information on the subject of current and past living
locations. It is seen that most students have lived or do live on-campus, most prefer
apartment-style housing, and most think Iowa State University should provide more on-
Iowa State University can improve the current housing situation were also gathered.
Based on the findings, recommendations include updating current housing, beginning the
and expanding the Cyride services. While all this research was discovered, limitations
apply. It cannot be guaranteed that all respondents were Iowa State University students.
B. Introduction
The enrollment rate at Iowa State University continues to rise exponentially. In the
2015-2016 school year, the school reached a record enrollment of 36,000 students; one-
year later, enrollment has already reached 37,000. As the total number of students
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continues to rise, the university is running out of living space to accommodate students,
on- and off-campus. According to the Iowa State University Department of Residence
website, 95 percent of freshman live on-campus, and 50 percent return the following year.
In any given semester, approximately 12,000 students live on-campus (Iowa State
University DOR). Our team was curious to see why students chose to live where they do,
and what the main factors were in their decisions. Through our research, we came to the
conclusion that Iowa State University must update their current housing, and increase the
To help you better understand these recommendations, this report will begin by detailing
our research methods and the findings. Next we will explain our conclusions based on
our findings, as well as the limitations to our research. Finally, we will go into more
depth regarding our recommendations. Through research and analysis, this report will
show why it is imperative that Iowa State University takes the further steps to solve the
A. Research Methods
To answer our research question regarding the current housing crisis at Iowa State
University and the ways students make choices regarding their housing, our team decided
We chose to conduct our survey using Google Forms. Each member of our team sent the
survey to a male and female from each student classification status (Freshman,
Sophomore, Junior, and Senior). Through this method, we set a goal of 60 responses. As
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we received feedback from participants, we found that many were choosing not to
respond. To fix this, we decided to open our survey to more students. We each sent our
survey to numerous people via email and social media. Some of us chose to send our
survey to a greek organization, students with whom we shared classes, people in our
majors, acquaintances, and others. We asked people to forward the survey to as many
students as they could. By opening our survey to more students, we had a much larger
response rate, and more data to analyze. In the end, we collected exactly 100 responses.
We conducted interviews of one female and one male respondent. Both are seniors at
Iowa State University. We asked them why they have chosen to live where they do
throughout their years at Iowa State University. The male respondent, a 5th-year-senior
studying electrical engineering has lived in his fraternity house since his first semester at
Iowa State University. He said that he chose this location for the opportunity to live with
his brothers for five years, and for the convenience of having a chef prepare all their
meals. He went on to say that he had the rest of his life to live in a house or apartment
respondent is a graduating senior studying political science and lives in Frederiksen Court
- one of the on-campus apartments. She said that she chose to live in an on-campus
apartment because it is convenient, cheaper than other options, and maintained by the
school. Also all utilities are included in the sticker price. Another convenient thing is
that you dont have to find someone to sublease from you when you graduate. She has
previously lived in her sorority chapter house, as well as an off-campus apartment. She
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shared that living in an on-campus apartment has been her favorite place to live so far, for
B. Statistical Method
From the results, we can concur that most students would like to see more on-campus
housing. 64.6 percent of the people would prefer to see more updated apartments built,
and 16.2 percent of people would like to see more townhouse-style housing built. Over
half of the people that took this survey have lived in on-campus housing, so most are
familiar with the kinds of on-campus housing is currently available. In other questions,
we asked what more they would like to see from the Iowa State University Department of
Residence. Respondents answered that they would like more updated housing, and/or for
Separating responses by gender, there is a clear difference in the numbers. Less female
respondents live on-campus housing now, and their main three reasons for choosing to
live where they do include: social reasons (66%), convenience (57%), and
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price (41%) with experience (at 35%) not trailing far behind. Looking at the answers
provided by male respondents, most live off-campus currently, but have lived on-campus
compared to female respondents. Similar to the female respondents, the three main
reasons for choosing to live where they do include: convenience (71%), price (67%),
and social reasons (57%). While the three main reasons are the same for both male and
C. Description
When conducting our research we choose to use qualitative and quantitative methods. We
felt that this would be the best choice because it would give the most insight into the the
housing problem at Iowa State University. We hoped that the survey would uncover
trends, including what motivates students when making their choice in housing. Based
on our intended audience, we concluded that the best way to achieve this was through a
self-administered survey. We sent out the survey online via Google forms, and left it open
to respondents for seven days. This survey included both multiple-choice questions (10
chose this method to gather our research regarding campus housing in light of the fact
that our respondents could do it on their own time and pace, which fits our intended
audience: college students with unpredictable and often hectic schedules. We emailed our
respondents the survey and shared it via social media on Facebook. In our emails and
posts, we informed respondents to what the survey pertained, its purpose and the deadline
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for completion. With also did two interviews, this method gave us the chance to converse
D. Sampling Method
Our population of interest consisted of students who have lived on- and off-campus
throughout their years at Iowa State University. We wanted to determine why and how
they made their decisions, and if they were satisfied with their housing choices. Our
sample was made up of students who are friends, acquaintances and classmates, which
resulted in a sample size of 100 students. We altered our sampling method because
initially many students did not reply to our survey when each of us sent it to only two
students per classification. We did not feel that the initial sample was a good
representation of our population. To create a larger sample size, we opened up our survey
to more students. After receiving more responses we feel that we have a better
representation.
III. CONCLUSION
While performing our research, we aimed to uncover where the majority of the students at
Iowa State University chose to live, and why they chose to live either on-campus or off-
campus. We sent out a survey to students here at Iowa State and gathered 100 responses. We
found that most students have lived on-campus for at least one-year while in college.
Through our research, we have established recommendations that we believe Iowa State
A. Limitations
One of our main limitations in our research was that we could not find as many males
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that were willing to participate in our survey. Every group member sent it to a handful of
males, but only twenty-one respondents were male, and two chose not to identify their
gender. Another limitation was that we cannot guarantee that only Iowa State University
students responded to the survey. Although all of our group members sent the survey to
Iowa State University students, they could have had friends take it that do not attend our
school, and by posting the survey on social media other friends and acquaintances who
To avoid not having all Iowa State University students, we could pass out the survey on
paper while on-campus and have those students fill it out and immediately give it back
upon completion. To prove they are Iowa State students we would need to see their Iowa
State ID. This would also help with our limitations by getting more males to fill out our
survey.
We hypothesize that if more men had responded, our data would have differed in that a
Furthermore, price and convenience would have been larger factors in where respondents
chose to live.
B. Recommendations
Based on our finding, we found that most Iowa State University students want more on-
campus apartments, similar to Frederiksen Court that are more modernized and come
with a lower price tag. They also do not want a required meal plan, and want the option
to use a full-service kitchen to cook their own meals. Lastly, people are wanting buses
that run more frequently to off-campus locations such as west Ames. Another
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recommendation is for Iowa State University to better advertise the the University West
apartments to students and provide more regular and frequent bussing options to residents
of that community.
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IV. REFERENCES
Department of Residence - Housing. Iowa State University, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.
V. APPENDICES
2. Pie chart referencing survey, asking what kind of housing style respondents preferred.
3. Pie chart referencing survey, asking if respondents thought Iowa State University should
4. Pie chart referencing survey, asking respondents where they had lived on campus during