The Data team distributed the 57-question survey from March 4, 2024, to April 18, 2024, sending the link to The Vanderbilt Hustler Digest newsletter and to the email addresses of the senior class.
Respondents were kept anonymous but required to sign in with their Vanderbilt email address and sign an honorarium confirming to be a member of the Class of 2024. All data from the survey is stored in a non-Vanderbilt Google account.
Questions dealing with sensitive topics were left optional. Optional questions included questions about students’ experiences with COVID-19 as well as “Have you had sex?” “Have you had sex in a non-residential Vanderbilt building?” “How often do you consume alcohol?” “How often do you consume marijuana?” “Which of the following drugs have you tried?” and “If you have ever owned a fake ID, which state did it say it was from?”
The survey received 268 responses out of a class of 1,860 — making up 14% of the class, a 90% confidence interval and a 5% margin of error. All graphs and statistics in the project use survey data, except for the Demographics section, which uses official data provided to The Hustler by a university representative. The survey asked 18 additional demographics questions, but a portion of the responses were lost during data collection and thus not used.
Survey respondents could choose to enter their email in a separate form to be entered into a raffle for Vanderbilt merch. 205 respondents chose to enter into the raffle.
Some percentages in the narrative and data visualizations may not add up to 100 due to rounding to the nearest percent. No weights were used to normalize the survey responses.
Data analysis was completed using R, data visualizations were created using Datawrapper, and web development was created using Javascript, HTML, CSS and Git.
Are there any questions you were hoping to see on this survey but didn’t? Email data@vandymedia.org!