Purpose and Demographics
The population of the survey was college students who have access to the internet, but the sample included college students who have access to my facebook account, have my AOL Instant Messenger screen name, and friends of my friends. 1 freshman, 6 sophomores, 14 juniors, 12 seniors, 1 graduate student took my survey. 8 were males and 26 were females.
The driving question for my survey was to see how many students work while attending college. 25 out of 34 said that they work while attending college.
This led me to wonder how students financially support themselves in college and other random questions concerning when students first held a job, course load, and extracurricular activities. The last three questions were opinion questions about how the student felt about volunteering working while taking courses, and working instead of attending college (the results of these questions will be addressed at the end of the report).
Data Results
To start out, I inquired about work history. 70.6% of my sample said they first held a job during high school. The percentage of students who first had a job before high school was about 17.6% and after high school only about 11.7%. This means that majority of my sample would have started acquiring some sense of a work ethic during their teenage years.
The next question asked, “How many jobs have you had since your first job (including your job)?” 5.9% said that they only had one. I looked at when each had their first jobs, one said during high school, which surprised me, and the other said after high school or during college, which was the answer I expected. 14.71% said two jobs, 32.35% said three jobs, and 47.06% said four or more.
This made me curious about longevity or satisfaction with a job. The question asked “Have you held a job for longer than one summer/year?” and, if yes, for how long (two, three, or four or more years/summers)? 32 out of 34 people said that they have returned to a job. The percentages of number of years or summers returning are shown on the graph below.
I was curious about the education work load of my sample. I asked how many credits each person was taking in the current semester. The mean number of credits each student was taking was somewhere from 15-17. I figured the majority of students would be taking this range of credit hours since it seems to be the standard, or norm, amount. None of my sample said they were taking more than 21 credits, which is a very rare, as is taking 18-20 credits. Credit hours are based on how much in-class time is spent with an expected amount of 2:1 credit hours spent on outside work. This means a student taking 18 credits is expected to spend 18 hours in class plus 36 hours outside of class doing some sort of “work.”
I also wondered how many students, who help pay for college, work while going to school. The chart below graphs the percentage of those who selected each option. However, it does not show, for example, if that they selected “yourself” plus “loans” (the chart on the next page shows these percentages).
- 76.47% said they help pay for college. 73% of those who help pay for college work during the year. I speculated that this percentage would be this high and maybe even higher.
- 50% said both parents/guardians and the student help pay for college, but have help from either loans or both scholarships and loans.
- What I found surprising was that 23.53%, of students paid for college by parents/guardians, themselves, scholarships, and loans.
- One statistic I found interesting was 3 out of 9 people who do not have any help from parents pay for college without any help from scholarships or loans. That is, 33% work enough to pay for college without any outside help.
None of the students who pay for college by themselves have help only from scholarships. They either have loans or both scholarships and loans. Yet, none of the students whose parents/guardians who help pay for college have loans without scholarships alongside. I wonder if there is a correlation between students who have scholarships and parents/guardians who help financially. A good follow up question, that would be a very personal one, would have been “Why parents/guardians do not help out paying for college.”
I looked the students who work while going to college and found out how many do not help pay for college and those who do.
24% of students who said they work while going to school do not help pay for college, yet their parents/guardians do help.
I asked three questions that used a Likert scale.
- The first set of data shows the samples’ feelings towards the enjoyment of volunteering. I asked this question out of curiosity about how people felt about spending extra time doing something for others without compensation. 91% said they strongly agreed and agreed about enjoying volunteering their time in the community, church, school, etc. and about 9% felt neutral. I did not have anyone disagree or not answer.
- The second question asked the sample how they would feel about going to school and not having to work at the same time. Half of the sample said that they would prefer to just go to school and not have to work. I took a look at those who said they did not work during the school year and two said they would prefer to work, three were neutral and four said they enjoyed not working while going to school. Only 4 people who work during the school year said that they would prefer to work during the school year. The rest did not answer, were neutral, or would prefer not to work during the school year.
This question is ambiguous which may have caused confusion about what was being asked, so there may be error in how the sample answered and may also have accounted for the 5.88% of those who did not choose to answer the question.
- The last scale on the graph shows how the sample feels about working instead of going to college. About 61% preferred to go to college instead of work while only about 18% would rather work than attend college. 35% said they were indifferent and 3% did not answer. However, those who preferred to work instead of attend college left me wondering why they did not want to further their education.
Conclusion
There are a few things that I would do differently if I were to re-do this survey. I have mentioned possible follow up questions earlier in my report. Also, I would have my sample give me specific answers about credits and the exact number of year/summers that my surveyors returned to a job. The main thing I would have done differently is keep the questions more specific and focused on one topic.