Executive Summary
The IUPUI Housing and Residence Life Department is interested in boosting their students’ roommate and overall housing satisfaction, as well as finding modern pairing methods and conflict resolution strategies that current and incoming students can use.
This report will benefit IUPUI’s HRL by giving our client and other coordinators recommendations on the best practices pre, during, and post roommate selection process. This also benefits the students who use on-campus housing because they are being paired using the best possible methods of roommate matching and have access to resources that equip them to deal with inevitable conflict during their university years.
The findings in this report are based on a local study conducted by the team of student consultants and online research conducted through academic sources. The local study was produced and the results were gathered using Qualtrics, a survey tool that generates analyses and graphs based on the respondents’ answers. The survey consisted of 10 questions, ranging from roommate conflict, personality tests, and anonymous pairing. The survey was sent out to current IUPUI students.
Online database research was collected using ProQuest Central and Academic Search Premier, leading multidisciplinary research databases whose access is paid for by IUPUI. Another tool used was Google Scholar, a free web search engine that searches for scholarly literature. The information gathered from this research helped shape our recommendations and gave rise to the focus and scope of the local study.
Executive Summary:
The IUPUI Housing and Residence Life Department is interested in boosting their students’ roommate and overall housing satisfaction, as well as finding modern pairing methods and conflict resolution strategies that current and incoming students can use.
This report will benefit IUPUI’s HRL by giving our client and other coordinators recommendations on the best practices pre, during, and post roommate selection process. This also benefits the students who use on-campus housing because they are being paired using the best possible methods of roommate matching and have access to resources that equip them to deal with inevitable conflict during their university years.
The findings in this report are based on a local study conducted by the team of student consultants and online research conducted through academic sources. The local study was produced and the results were gathered using Qualtrics, a survey tool that generates analyses and graphs based on the respondents’ answers. The survey consisted of 10 questions, ranging from roommate conflict, personality tests, and anonymous pairing. The survey was sent out to current IUPUI students.
Online database research was collected using ProQuest Central and Academic Search Premier, leading multidisciplinary research databases whose access is paid for by IUPUI. Another tool used was Google Scholar, a free web search engine that searches for scholarly literature. The information gathered from this research helped shape our recommendations and gave rise to the focus and scope of the local study.
​
Key Findings From Online Research
-
Davidson College uses the Meyers-Briggs personality test, and they have a 96% retention rate (Ingalls, 2000).
-
Openness from the Big Five factor theory of personality was found to be the most important factor out of the five in overall roommate satisfaction (Reynolds, 2016).
-
Stanford University keeps roommate assignments anonymous until move-in day, and they have a 98% freshman retention rate (U.S. News, 2019).
-
College Student Journal found that the 19 out of 29 coping mechanisms that students used to control stress did not work, therefore causing more stress and conflict in their new living situation (Bland, 2012).
​
Brief Recommendations
-
Pair roommates based on personality similarities
-
Keep roommate assignments anonymous until move-in day
-
Administer a conflict management course to incoming students