Man walking the route to Carmichael College, photographed on Oct. 23, 2024. (Hustler Multimedia/Savannah Walske)
The Data team distributed the 44-question survey from Sept. 19, 2024, to Oct. 16, 2024, sending the link to The Vanderbilt Hustler Digest newsletter, the email addresses of the first-year class and through various other avenues.
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 2028. All data from the survey is stored in a non-Vanderbilt Google account.
Questions dealing with sensitive topics included a “Prefer not to answer” option. These questions include, “If you are eligible to vote in the 2024 United States presidential election, how do you intend to vote?,” “Have you had sex?,” “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 256 responses out of a class of 1,630 — making up around 15% of the class, a 95% confidence interval and a 6% margin of error. All graphs and statistics in the project use survey data; demographics data was additionally checked against official university data.
Survey respondents could choose to enter their email in a separate form to be entered into a raffle for Vanderbilt merch. Fifty-seven 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. 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!