Why would we go to the trouble to find the Olin student population's opinion?
1) If we know the binary YES/NO opinion of Olin students on gender neutral housing, we can judge whether or not our goal is feasible.
For example, if we discovered through our survey that 80% of Olin students are opposed to gender neutral housing, then we would probably due well to either abandon our goal and accept that too many students are opposed, or inquire as to why students are opposed, and reevaluate our goal. Thus, in our survey, we included asked people if they were “for” or “against” gender neutral housing.
2) We wanted to identify how gender neutral housing would make students feel.
We wanted to know more than whether or not students are “for” or “against.” For example, one student (let’s call him Joe Smith) may have a particularly strong opinion on the subject. Joe is homosexual and is a little uncomfortable rooming with a male. Joe would be very happy if Olin had a gender neutral housing policy and would have a much more enjoyable experience with his roommate. Joe is a strong proponent of gender neutral housing. On the other end of the spectrum, we have John. John has heard horror stories from a friend, Greg, at another school with gender neutral hosing. Greg roomed with a significant other and had a difficult break-up. Greg and his SO had to switch rooms and had trouble finding a new place to sleep. Greg told John his story, and John is concerned that similar situations would occur at Olin. John is a strong opponent of gender neutral housing. Next we have two more people, Jim and Jacob. Jim “kinda likes the idea of gender neutral housing” and Jacob “kinda doesn’t.” Whereas Joe and John are strongly attached to their opinions and care about the policy, Jim and Jacob would not be effected by the policy one way or another.
3) In a binary voting system (YES or NO), there is not distinction between the people who care a lot and the people who care a little. To satisfy the student body, it is important to know how MUCH people care, in addition to what their opinion is.
Therefore, we included the following question and response options:
How do you feel about gender neutral housing?
Strongly against
Against
Neutral
For
Strongly for
When we evaluate the responses, this will give us more insight into what the overall change in happiness of the student population would be if gender neutral housing is enacted.
4) We were curious as to how many people would room with someone of the opposite sex, given a gender neutral housing policy.
We included a check box that stated “I would like to live with a specific person of the opposite gender.” If no one checked this box, then it would seem as if a gender neutral housing policy would have no effect. People would continue to want to room with people of the same sex. If however, we saw a large number of people check the box, we would expect a greater change if gender neutral housing was enacted.
5) We wanted to identify people with strong opinions so we could chat with them to learn more about their views in the future
We wanted to identify strong supporters of gender neutral housing so we could work with them in the future. We also wanted to identify strong opponents of gender neutral housing so we could talk with them to see their side of the argument, identify what makes gender neutral hosing undesirable, and try to come up with a compromise or some type of solution that satisfies everyone. In order to do so, we included an optional field for people to enter their names. If you took the survey and entered your name, we’ll be sending you an email before the 28th of February. We would like to talk!
6) We included an optional open field for comments, allowing us to see immediate, personal feedback.
It’s always frustrating to have a survey be to limiting, and a comments field allows people to express whatever they didn’t get to express in the previous sections or elaborate on a point.
Our survey also had some problems
When we were creating our survey, we included some questions that were redundant and biased.
One of these was a check box marked “I believe Olin students are responsible enough to cohabit with the opposite gender.” Another was a check box labeled ”I believe gender should not be the primary criteria for choosing a roommate.” These questions were redundant because we were asking something similar when we said “How do you feel about gender neutral housing?” They were also biased. If we had labeled the first checkbox “I believe Olin students are NOT responsible enough to cohabit with the opposite gender” we might have received different responses despite the fact that one question is simply the opposite of the other (checking the box in the first case means that you would leave the box empty in the second case, and visa versa). Two people who took the survey mentioned that “people often feel pressured to choose an option, and as such this survey can be viewed as forcing their hand.” Instead of phrasing the question as a positive (or negative) statement, a better option would have been to say something like “Do you believe Olin students are responsible enough to cohabit with the opposite gender? (YES or NO).” Because the purpose of the survey was not to change opinion, but to measure opinion, our biased question did not actually help us. In addition, because of the redundancies of both questions, they didn’t further inform us.
In addition, our survey muddled the words “gender” and “sex.”
Our current housing policy is limited by “sex,” a physical manifestation (genitalia, hormones, and chromosomes). A person of the male sex is not allowed to room with a person of the female sex. Gender, on the other hand, is a social construct. It is defined by the person. Someone of male sex can have a feminine gender, and visa versa. Gender is also not binary; it is not limited to male and female. When we made a checkbox titled “I would like to live with a specific person of the opposite gender,” we actually meant “I would like to live with a specific person of the opposite sex.”
“Show me the results!”
I imagine you are screaming at this point. The wait is over my friends. We received 87 responses—one quarter of the total Olin student population. Our sample size was large, but not perfect. The survey was simply billed as a “30 second survey” without any mention of gender neutral housing in the email. Hopefully, the sample was large enough, and random enough to reflect the overall opinion of Olin students, however we can’t be sure. Use your best judgement when interpreting the results.
The majority of students are for gender neutral housing.
But let’s weed out the “neutral” and look only at people with an opinion one way or another.
First, we will look at the binary system with strong and weak opinions lumped together. If we interpret the survey as a “satisfaction” ranking of Olin, where people who are “for” gender neutral housing are only satisfied when Olin has a gender neutral hosing policy and people who are “against” gender neutral housing are only satisfied when Olin does not have a gender neutral housing policy, we see that 77.8% of non-neutral Oliners are currently dissatisfied, and if we enacted a gender neutral housing policy we would reduce that to 22.2%. Assuming we can’t satisfy everyone (which is a topic for another blog post) we see that gender neutral housing is the best option for optimal satisfaction.
In addition, if we look only at people with strong opinions, we see an even greater percentage of people who are for gender neutral housing. In other words, people who are for gender neutral housing tend to care more overall than people who are against gender neutral housing.
Currently, out of people with strong opinions, we have an 85.7% strong dissatisfaction. If we implemented gender neutral housing, that number would decrease to only 14.3% strong dissatisfaction—a major improvement.
90% of survey respondents checked the box titled “I believe Olin students are responsible enough to cohabit with the opposite gender.”
Even if this check box was biased, a significant number of Oliners believe we are responsible enough to handle gender neutral housing.
10 people, or 14% of survey respondents checked the box titled “I would like to live with a specific person of the opposite gender.”
In other words, without gender neutral housing at least ten Olin students are being prevented from rooming with the person of their choice because the person of their choice is of the opposite sex.
Among people who were against gender neutral housing, the consensus was that gender neutral housing will cause difficult situations when significant others share a room, then break up.
“I don't think gender neutral housing is a good idea, simply due to the opportunity for drama, relationship troubles, etc.”
“People might think this is a good idea- but it usually ends very badly. There is nothing wrong with living in two singles next to each other... and spending time in the others' room.”
“I'm not bothered by the idea of SO's living together... what bothers me is all of the problems that kind of arrangement would cause - especially involving breakups.”
“I think some serious thought should be given to whether boyfriend/girlfriend pairs should be allowed to cohabit. It has the potential to be just fine for strong, stable relationships, but it also has the potential to end really poorly.”
“significant others rooming together is probably a bad idea....”
Because “problematic breakups with a significant other” seems to be the #1 concern among Olin students who are against gender neutral housing, we will try to find creative and helpful solutions to this problem that will go along with our gender neutral housing plan.
If we can mitigate problematic breakups due to significant others rooming together while enacting a gender neutral housing policy, we may be able to reduce the number of people against gender neutral hosing. We will discuss solutions in a future blog post.
