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University of Massachusetts Amherst
SARIS - Student Affairs Research, Information and Systems
Student Activities Trust Fund Survey (F97-F)

Executive Summary:Students were asked to rate the importance of increased funding for student-initiated activities and services. They are most likely to support budgetary increases for Registered Student Organizations, Commuter Services and Housing Resources, and the Student Center for Educational Research and Advocacy. Respondents' priorities differ by gender and by whether they live on or off campus.

On Wednesday, November 5, 1997, Project Pulse conducted a telephone survey investigating how students would like to spend a pool of money recently allocated by the administration for increased funding of student-initiated activities and services. Pulse interviewers attempted to contact 1113 undergraduate students who were randomly selected by computer from the University’s database. Of these, 690 were successfully contacted and 522 (76.8%) agreed to be interviewed. See Table 1 for the final disposition of the sample and Table 2 for a demographic summary of the respondents. The response rate for the survey was 47%.

Pulse interviewers asked students to rate the importance of a budget increase for each of twelve campus-based organizations and services on a ten-point scale in which 1 is “very unimportant” and 10 is “very important.” The average (mean) importance rating for each organization/service is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Students’ perceptions of the importance of increased funding for organizations and services
Mean rating on 10 point scale (1=very unimportant, 10=very important)

Two-tailed t-tests for equality of means indicate that students residing off-campus give lower mean ratings than on-campus students to the importance of additional funding for the Union Program Council (5.83 v. 6.53) , Area Governments (5.46 v. 6.12), and the Union Video Center (4.63 v. 5.18). The same testing procedure indicates that students who are members of a Registered Student Organization give a higher mean rating to the importance of additional funding for Registered Student Organizations, but show no other significant differences from the total population sampled. Analysis also indicates that women give higher mean ratings than do men to the importance of additional funding for Area Governments (6.33 v. 5.53), the Student Center for Educational Research and Advocacy (6.66 v. 6.29), ALANA Affairs (6.66 v. 6.08), and the Student Union Craft Center (5.24 v. 4.58). Men give higher mean ratings than women to additional funding for the student radio station WMUA (5.85 v. 5.43).

-- Meg Kluge

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