Campus Transit Research Methods

This report is based on data collected from three university and college campuses in the Fargo-Moorhead area; North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo; Minnesota State University at Moorhead (MSUM), MN; and Concordia College (CC) also in Moorhead, MN. Surveys were sent via e-mail to students at each of the three campuses and to the faculty and staff of NDSU and MSUM. This chapter contains the description of the data collection, the survey instrument design, and the mailings.

To better understand the perceptions of students and faculty and staff towards the use of public transportation, surveys were developed for:

1. North Dakota State University
2. Minnesota State University Moorhead
3. Concordia College

Survey Instrument Design

There were basically three surveys developed for this study. However, modifications were made to two of them to serve the purposes of each campus. The first survey developed pertained to use of the public transit bus ridership and travel behaviors. This survey was modified for each campus as well as for students and faculty. The questions on the survey will be described in this section. The second survey was to determine if students and faculty at NDSU would participate in a carpool program if the university implemented one. The third survey was to evaluate if Concordia students would support the implementation of a taxi service in the late night hours on its campus. The questions on that survey will also be explained in this section.

Transit Bus Survey

The survey design was quite similar among the three campuses. Only minor changes were made such as changing parking lot names to coincide with each campus and removing questions that were not relevant or acceptable to the campus administration. Very similar questions were asked of students, faculty, and staff.

There were three main sections to the questionnaire. The first section contained demographic questions such as gender, student classification, employment status, and whether the student lives on or off-campus. The second section was specifically designed for students that lived off-campus. The students were asked to approximately how far they live from campus, the time periods they spend on campus, the locations they travel from prior to coming to campus, e.g., home, work shopping, etc. and how many one-way trips they make to campus per day.

The third section was relevant to all students. The questions related more to travel patterns, experiences, and preferences. There were also several questions pertaining to the students' use of the Metropolitan Area Transit (MAT) serving the Fargo-Moorhead area. Most of the questions were asked to determine the students' willingness to use public transit, their experiences with it, and ways to improve service to attract them to ride more regularly. Further, questions were asked about the need for additional bus shelters and preferences for heated shelters. The NDSU survey contained additional questions regarding the campus circulator that has a designated route serving the campus. Questions were asked about the use of the circulator and students, as well as faculty and staff, were asked about suggested changes for the service.

Mailings

Electronic mail was used to administer each of the surveys to each of the campuses. An official from each campus assisted in the mailings by sending an electronic letter to the students and faculty and staff asking them to complete the survey at the given web link. The survey was posted on SURTC's website to make data collection and analysis more convenient. The following paragraphs describe the mailings sent by each of the campuses.

NDSU (Fall)

North Dakota State University had support from the student body and President Chapman. An email message was sent to students, faculty, and staff asking them to complete the questionnaire.

Table 3.1 Response Rate for North Dakota State University

MSUM (Winter)

Les Bakke at MSUM sent an e-mail message to the students, faculty, and staff asking them to complete the questionnaire.

Table 3.2 Response Rate for Minnesota State University -- Moorhead

Concordia (Spring, Summer)

Mr. Thomas Iverson sent the students the questionnaire via email asking about transportation. The survey pertained to the use of the MAT bus around the Fargo-Moorhead community.

Table 3.3 Response Rate for Concordia College

Response rates were poor to fair for all campuses. NDSU and Concordia had a much higher response rate than MSUM, which had a dismal 7% response rate.

Mobility of NDSU Students: Transit Survey Results

Transit services are important to the North Dakota State University community. A transit survey was developed in fall 2002 to determine students' specific transportation needs and to explore options and opportunities in meeting those needs. The Small Urban and Rural Transit Center (SURTC), a research program within the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute (UGPTI), and NDSU student government developed the transit survey.

Student Government President James Burgum e-mailed a letter asking NDSU students to participate in the survey. A direct link to the survey was included in the e-mail. The survey was designed to investigate a number of issues regarding campus transit use, user perceptions and user opinions about the quality of services provided by Metropolitan Area Transit (MAT) and the Campus Circulator. The results of this survey are intended to help plan the transit services provided on and to the university campus.

This preliminary report is a snapshot of survey results. The report is divided into six sections: 1) student demographics, 2) movement demands of campus students, 3) student perceptions of MAT services, 4) student perceptions of parking issues, 5) demand for the NDSU Circulator, and 6) campus accommodations for transit. SURTC received responses from 1,665 students who completed the 35-question survey. Their information provides insight into many transit issues including behavioral response to current land use and transit services. This will be important to monitor changes in student perceptions in response to changes in transit services and design through future surveys. A more detailed report will be published this spring.

Of the 1,665 students who responded, 941 or 56.5 percent were female, and 724 or 43.5 percent were male. In checking registration records, campus enrollment is 43.4 percent female and 56.6 percent male. The percentage of women who responded to this survey is proportionately higher than the percentage of women attending NDSU.

It is not possible with an electronic on-line survey to ensure equal participation from all student classifications. Nevertheless, there was distribution among all class levels from freshman through graduate level (Table 1). The junior class had the lowest proportion of representation, and graduate students and freshman responders were slightly greater than actual class proportions.

Table 4.1 Survey Response Distribution Compared to Actual Class Distribution

The most disproportionate representation for students who completed the survey was between full-time and part-time students. Of the respondents, 95 percent were full-time students, while only 79.6 percent of the student body has full-time status. Just over 98 percent of the freshmen and sophomores who completed the survey were full-time students. This may indicate full-time students are more interested in transit than their part-time counterparts. There could be a number of reasons for this including financial considerations, scheduling, convenience and saving time.

Student's employment status almost always has an impact on their response to personal environmental issues. About one-fourth of the survey respondents were not employed (Figure 4.1). Almost half of the respondents work off-campus, while one-fourth work on-campus. Just over 26 percent of NDSU students are not employed. There are some noted differences in the behavior of employed and not-employed students that will be discussed throughout this report.

A further breakdown shows that on campus there is an even split between male and female employees, however, off-campus more women than men work (Figure 4.2). There is no survey information available to explain this difference.

Whether students live on or off-campus was another explored variable. The survey respondents were divided, with two-thirds living off-campus and one-third living on campus. According to the Campus Life office, there is dorm capacity for about 29 percent of students. It was also determined that 59 percent of students living off campus considered their address temporary. This may imply that a large percentage of the students living off campus are from outside the Fargo-Moorhead area.

We received a good distribution across many categories. The class distribution was within six percentage points and the students living on and off-campus was within four percentage points. We were unable to get off-campus employment numbers for that comparison.