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Penn State Pulse Monitors Heartbeat of Campus Community

By Andy Elder, Student Affairs Writer

When doctors want to assess patients' well being, they often take their pulse. When Penn State Student Affairs wants to gauge students' feelings on a certain subject, they conduct a Penn State Pulse.

Penn State Pulse, marking its 10-year anniversary, is a series of   internet and phone surveys designed to get a better understanding of students' opinions on a wide-ranging list of subjects.

"Penn State Pulse is modeled after a program of the same name at the University of Massachusetts Amherst," said Andrea Dowhower, Director of Student Affairs Research and Assessment (SARA). "It began in the spring of 1995 under the leadership of Vice President Bill Asbury and Betty Moore, its founding director."

Now, 10 years later, Penn State Pulse is still an effective tool for Student Affairs to maintain its student-centered focus.

"Surveys are requested primarily by Student Affairs staff, although requests also come from faculty and staff outside of Student Affairs and students," Dowhower said. "Priorities are determined   based on the strategic priorities of Student Affairs and the university as well as funding. An advisory board as well as the directors are consulted before a final schedule of surveys is finalized."

Dowhower said recent surveys have included subjects such as: students' tobacco use, Counseling and Psychological Services, students' religious and spiritual needs, students' alcohol use and, women and relationship violence.

Next up on the list is a survey of graduate students' career services needs and a survey on men's perceptions of relationship violence. Future surveys will focus on career services needs of students at Penn State's Commonwealth campuses, first-year students' experiences, and a look at the "We Are Changing Penn State" campaign, centering on its effectiveness and the overall sense of community and civility on campus.

And, Dowhower revealed, SARA is in the process of piloting a national survey on the Student Newspaper Readership Program in partnership with Educational Benchmarking, Inc.

While those surveys will yield interesting and useful data, in the 10 years SARA has been conducting Penn State Pulses, the challenge of conducting the surveys has grown increasingly difficult.

"Student response is generally positive. A lot is dependent on the topic; some topics elicit a stronger response based on students' interest. Some issues of response rate have begun to emerge for web surveys because of the high level of spam and because of the proliferation of web surveys across campus," Dowhower said.

"By phone, our cooperation rate continues to be strong although the issue we are having with our phone surveys is the growing percentage of students who do not have/provide local phone information."

Penn State Pulse isn't the only tool Student Affairs uses to assess student opinion.

"In addition to Pulse, SARA also provides leadership for numerous other assessment efforts including the Student Services Inventory (a national benchmark survey of student services), strategic planning, the Student Satisfaction Survey, and national surveys such as AFA/EBI Fraternity/Sorority Assessment," Dowhower said.

"As these efforts increase, resources in SARA are stretched, causing the need for the division-wide determination of priorities regarding Pulse and these other assessment efforts."

Because Penn State Pulse is such an effective measuring device of student thoughts and feelings, the demand is great to have a study commissioned. That's why Penn State Pulse will continue.

"Pulse continues to be a valuable tool for Student Affairs and the university. We continue to have to turn down requests each semester based on our schedule. In addition, we have a growing demand for presentations and additional analysis of our work," Dowhower said.

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