The Data team distributed the 55-question survey from Aug. 28, 2023, to Oct. 11, 2023, sending the link to The Vanderbilt Hustler Digest newsletter and to the email addresses of the first-year 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 2027. All data from the survey is stored in a non-Vanderbilt Google account.
Questions dealing with sensitive topics were left optional. Optional questions were: “Approximately what was your annual household income?” “Have you had sex?” “How often do you consume alcohol?” “How often do you use 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 338 responses out of a class of 1,622 — making up 20% of the class, a 95% confidence interval and a 5% margin of error. One response was removed as spam (for instance, selecting they had received a 39.5 on the ACT).
Survey respondents could choose to enter their email in a separate form to be entered into a raffle for Vanderbilt merch. 268 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, due to relative accuracy of demographic (gender and international student status) 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!