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.
Introduction
Our Recommendation Report has 3 total analyses that we would like you to consider implementing at IUPUI in order to promote an effective and satisfying incoming student housing experience. The Recommendation Report is comprised of three individual recommendations. The Myer-Briggs test would be incredibly helpful for pairing roommates together.
The second recommendation would be to use anonymous paring. Once the students have a roommate, IUPUI should not reveal who their new roommate is to avoid early judgments. The final recommendation is to institute a conflict management course that would be required to complete. This would better prepare inexperienced students for their new college environment. Once the students are paired, we believe that the students should not be told who their roommate is. This anonymous pairing method has been found to alleviate issues such as “google stalking” and immediate judgments and instead forcing students to make their own judgements of the character of their new roommate. After the pairs have been identified and moved-in, we now recommend conflict management instruction through a web portal, much like how students are to take a drug, alcohol, and sex safety course. This class will teach new students who may be inexperienced with handling conflict and stressful situations about how to more efficiently deal with these new situations in their shared living spaces, as well as working on the big three issues of guests, illicit activities, and cleanliness.
Context for the Project
The IUPUI Housing and Residence Life is seeking efficient and effective methods to apply to their current roommate matching system before, during, and after the process. Successful roommate pairings are critical to students’ academic, social, and emotional well-being in college.
Our goal as student writing consultants was to collect research from an assortment of sources to discover and confirm the most modern and practical recommendations for the Housing Department. To do this, we examined data from academic journals, university publications, previous studies, and news reports, as well as data collected via a survey of current on-campus residents.
This report presents a recommendation for each stage of the roommate process, the pairing, initial meetings, and conflict during the relationship, that can be applied to IUPUI’s current roommate system at little or no cost to the department. Very few additional resources are required to implement these practices. Following the recommendations described in this report will result in higher roommate satisfaction as well as overall on-campus housing satisfaction and could lead to more students choosing to utilize IUPUI’s on-campus housing services.
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Methodology for Online Database Research and Local Study
In order to create a list of recommendations that will benefit IUPUI students and the HRL the most, we first pursued the matching strategies of other universities that have a high freshman retention rate as well as other general topics including: common conflicts among roommates, IUPUI’s current matching system, client and company background, etc.
All initial research was performed with the help of IUPUI’s subscription to ProQuest Central and EBSCO Academic Search Premier as well as Google Scholar. All initial research was used to gain a background on the topic, and a second wave of research was performed to address the specific scope of the project. Key findings led to the development of a survey regarding each of the three roommate phases, and this data was used to support the final recommendations.
Online Research
Using the above databases, we initially sought to understand and establish background information on the topic as well as find general data that could be applied to a more narrow topic later. Some search phrases we used were as follows:
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Personality tests
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Colleges with the highest freshman retention rate
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Modern paring methods
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Conflict between roommates
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Activities roommates do together
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What makes a roommate relationship successful
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Dorm life
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Conflict management
After the client meeting, the scope of the project became clearer and narrower, so additional online research was done to fill in crucial data we missed the first time. Searches this time were focused on three key areas: matching roommates based on a variety of personality tests, keeping roommates anonymous until move-in day, and helping students resolve inevitable issues in their roommate relationship.
Upon the compilation of all the team members’ research, we felt relatively knowledgeable about our client’s challenge, and we were able to form preliminary recommendations. After completion of our online research, we felt ready to proceed with a local study and collect our own data to help support our findings.
Survey-Based Research
Our survey tool was built using Qualtrics, a free survey creator, consisted of 10 questions that related to pre, during, and post roommate pairing with the hope of gaining insight into the students’ perspectives on the topic. The survey was given as a link and was distributed to the W231 class, student rosters from various courses at IUPUI, and all current IUPUI on-campus residents using the Roompact system. The survey addressed students’ opinions on various issues, gave several sample scenarios, and asked a critical question to weed out unrelated responses. After a week, a reminder to take the survey was sent to on-campus residents through a mailing list.
The results from the survey were helpful in determining students’ responses to hypothetical situations that pertained to our focus areas: pre, during, and post roommate matching. The results were limited to 101 responses that answered “yes” to the first question, “Do you currently have a roommate or have ever had a roommate?” More than 101 people responded to the survey, but if they had never had a roommate, their survey responses were thrown out.
After careful analysis of our online research and data from the roommate survey, themes started to emerge that later were shaped into distinct focus areas. Three clear trouble spots presented themselves, and these findings were ultimately used to shape our final recommendations.
