I sent my survey to the first 60 SCU Broncos I could think of off the top of my head. Since I knew all of these folks, I assumed that I would get a pretty favorable response rate as far as emailed surveys go. I even included a subject line that read, “TAKE THIS SURVEY HELP A BROTHA OUT” in an effort to catch people’s attention.
I also texted about 10 of those people and asked them to take the survey right now and make the people they were with at the time take it as well. I expected about 20-25 responses because I expected at least 1 in 3 people to respond to the email by taking the survey. I only expected 1 in 3 people to respond because I know that I definitely ignore most surveys I get sent.
I thought the survey did a fine job collecting the thoughts of this group of students. If I had to do it all over, I would have sent it out to a broader group of people, and not just my friends, since most of my friends are interested in athletics as I am.
I found out that guys usually think that the student body around them is less enthusiastic than gals do. Males rated the spiritedness of their peers at 2.733 on average on a scale from 1-5 while females rated their fellow broncos at 3.143.
People generally think they are more spirited than the average student, which is unsurprising. Most people have been to a few sporting events. Only one person surveyed had never even been to an SCU sporting event. 45.5% of those surveyed went to between three and seven events this year while 31.8% went to one or two and 18.2% went to at least seven. I would say this level of engagement is about what it should be in relation to their scoring of their school spirit.
A whopping 77.3% agree that they wish the school was more enthusiastic about athletics. Only one person stated that they desire a drop in enthusiasm from the student body. 68.2% of those surveyed believe that more resources should be allocated to athletics no matter the cost to the other aspects of the university and only one person actually said they would not want more funding for athletics.
Overall, this survey reinforced my view that most people, along with myself, are dissatisfied with the current state of Santa Clara athletics and believe the school should make our athletes more of a priority. The student body in general is fairly spirited and goes to a few sporting events a year, but could definitely improve. Although I believe my findings to be very true, I do realize that this is all based on responses from 22 friends of mine so the data isn’t exactly the gospel truth.
I am curious about the positive effects that greater school spirit and athletics pride can have on a school.