KutztownCollege Student’s Behaviors and the Secondhand Effects
On the Surrounding Neighborhood
Barry Keller
Crime and Justice
Research Methods
Prepared For
Dr. Charles Brown
Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
AlbrightCollege
Reading, PA 19612
610-921-7865
I. Summary Sheet
A. Research Question:
Does the lawless behavior of KutztownUniversity college students have an adverse effect on the quality of life for those residents who reside in Kutztown Borough?
B. Hypothesis:
Students do affect the quality of life for Kutztown Borough residents in a negative way during the academic school year.
C. Type of Research:
This will be an explanatory research project.
D. Qualitative or Quantitative Study
This will be a quantitative study.
E. Methods Utilized to Conduct Study
I will utilize surveys and content analysis to conduct this study.
Abstract
This research study willrandomly survey a group of Kutztown Borough residents in an effort to measure their opinions regarding the behaviors of KutztownUniversity students. Specifically, I will survey these residents to discover if the lawless behaviors of the college students have an adverse effect on the quality of life in the neighborhood where these residents reside. I will obtain a complete list of permanent residents within the borough of Kutztown. I will utilize simple random sampling to determine the 30 elements that I will survey. Once these elements are selected, I will mail each of them a survey with a list of questions that will be used to measure the overall quality of life for these residents. The survey questions will focus on the number of incidents within the past year that the residents observed specific deviant behaviors by the students. Upon the return of these surveys, they will be totaled and measured according to the number of times each behavior was witnessed. The number of incidents will be tallied in an effort to determine the overall quality of life. This study is significant because it will be able to determine whether or not the student’s behavior have a significant negative impact on the lives of the residents. I theorize that the study will conclude that the behavior of the students does have an adverse effect on the lives of residents. If this is true, this can provide a valid reason for the increase of spending for more student activities, police officers, police and possibly additional funding for law enforcement so they are able to curtail such behaviors. If the residents are unhappy with where they reside due to students, then the borough and university can work together in an effort to limit these behaviors.
Introduction
There are literally hundreds of colleges and universities across America. For small and large communities alike, these houses of academia often provide numerous jobs and various economic supports to small and large communities. Yet, for those of us who do not reside in these “college towns”, we rarely ever think of any negative impact that the students may have to the residents surrounding these colleges and universities. It is no grave secret that with college, students often attend parties. With parties, there is loud music, fighting, vomiting on the sidewalks, public urination, vandalism, littering, loitering and crime. For those individuals that live in these towns, especially smaller towns, it is an issue worth researching.
I will conduct a study in an effort to determine if the deviant behaviors of KutztownUniversity students have an adverse effect on the quality of life for neighborhood residents. I believe this issue is of concern for those permanent residents who reside there year round. It is important to discover whether or not their lives are negatively affected during the time period that the students are present. If their lives are affected in a negative way, then a study of this kind can provide support for the college and town to develop ways to limit such negative behaviors. It may provide support for additional funding for more campus security, local police officers or programs that the college could start in an effort to keep students better occupied.
In this paper, I will analyze the processes that will beutilized to conduct this study. I have reviewed the literature on similar research conducted on this topic.I’ll explain the various methods and procedures utilized for conducting this research. I will provide an overall analysis and conclusions for this research. This proposal will include a detailed schedule and budget outlining the duration and projected expenses of this study. Also included in this proposal will be the cover letters, consent forms and copies of the survey that will be used in this research. By the conclusion of this proposal, I will have clearly outlined my methodology for this research project.
Literature Review
The literature that I reviewed for this topicwill be broken down into three separate categories. The first category is the research linking a relationship to crime and college students. The second category pertains to the benefits of the community/college relationship. The third category pertains to the disruption between community life and college campuses. I discovered that there was very little direct research conducted on the same topic as my research project.
In addressing crime and college students, a 1995 article published in Research in Higher Education found that rates of violent crime and property crime on campus were declining. The research indicated the lowest crime rates were found at two-year colleges while the highest crime rates were located at medical and science colleges (Volkwein 1995). A 2002 article published in theJournal of Interpersonal Violence indicated that school was noted as the second most frequent location noted for peer victimization when the events involved being threatened, assaulted or seeing a knife or gun being utilized as a weapon (Scarpa, Fikretoglu, Bowser, Hurley, Pappert, Romero, and Van Voorhees 2002).
A book published in 1994 entitled, Campus Ethnoviolence, indicated that “one of every four students has been the victim of an ethnoviolent incident(s) based on race/ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability, or national origin and that male fraternity members were the most likely perpetrators of such acts (Pincus & Ehrlich 1994).
The next group of studies reviewed indicated links between college students and society. An article in Research in Politics and Societycites how colleges/universities have the potential to enhance neighborhoods through community groups. Such groups can “address social problems and build social capital” through partnerships with the institution and the community (Kleniewski 1999). This article clearly shows one way where the community can benefit through a neighboring college.
Another example of how colleges/universities can work with neighborhoods to improve quality of life is through community trial projects. An article in Addiction indicates how one such trial project was conducted in an effort to reduce alcohol related problems. This article cites positive outcomes at curtailing alcohol related problems when there is involvement of citizens and neighborhood groups within the community (Holder & Reynolds 1997).
More related to my research project are the studies I reviewed where there is definite disorder in the neighborhoods surrounding college campuses. An analysis of campus racial disorders published in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change indicated that there were higher rates of racial disorder in 1967-1969 when campuses had strong ties to the local communities. This analysis also discovered that “economic competition indicators for the local community influenced campus rioting, just as they influenced inner-city rioting (Myers & Buoye 2001). Another analysis published in New Directions for Institutional Advancement conducted in the 1970s yielded similar results of disconcert among the community. This analysis showed as the campuses expanded, so did community conflict (Reichman 1980).
I discovered two studies that were very similar to my research project. A study published in The Humanities and Social Sciences shows a direction correlation between crime on campus and its negative impact on society. This study also shows how the increase of campus crime is correlated with the growth of the college institution (Fernandez-Lanier 1999). Another study published in Social Science and Medicineshowed a direct correlation with student behaviors and the negative impact on society. This study showed that those surveyed who resided within one mile of a college campus were significantly more likely to be affected by student behaviors such as disturbances, public intoxication, vomiting, urination, noise and vandalism than those who lived greater than one mile from campus (Wechsler; Lee, E.; Hall; Wafenaar; Lee, H. 2002).
Overall, through the review of this literature, I have discovered that there is a definite concern with certain behaviors of college students and the neighboring community. Most literature highlighted the violence among college students on campus and its affects on those students on campus. However, I noticed most of the research failed to study the affects that violence and undesirable student behavior has on the neighborhoods that surround these colleges and universities. With the exception of the article published in Social Science and Medicine, I did not find any study concerned with the deviant behaviors of students and its impact on the society that immediately surrounds them.
Methods Section
In this research proposal, I will attempt to determine if the lawless behavior of KutztownUniversity college students have an adverse effect on the quality of life for those residents who reside in Kutztown Borough. First, I will travel to Kutztown Borough and obtain a complete listing of all permanent borough residents from the borough hall or police department. There will be some degree of error in this sampling frame because the list of residents will be according to the last borough census, which was completed at the end of 2003. Therefore, this list will not account for the residents who recently moved out of and into the borough.
There are approximately 5,000 borough residents that will make up the sampling frame for this research. From this sampling frame, I will randomly select 200 residents by using the simple random sampling method. These random samples will be selected by assigning each resident a number in chronological order from 1 to 5000. From there, all names will be placed into a container and randomly selected. Each resident that is picked will have the specific number assigned to them. That number will correspond to a number on the survey. Survey number 1 will be assigned to the lowest number assigned to the resident, survey number 2 to the second lowest number assigned to the resident and so on. This will provide me with a means of tracking which residents respond to the surveys. The ideal goal is to obtain at least 30 residents to respond to the survey.
Designating the respondents by number will aid me in keeping the respondents confidential. Each person who is mailed a survey will be provided with two copies of an informed consent form. One copy will be for them to keep and another to be mailed back to me. A cover letter will be provided to each surveyed person explaining the purpose of the survey and reassurance that they will be kept anonymous. They will also be provided with a survey for their completion along with a stamped self addressed envelope to me for their convenience.
The data on the surveys will ask eight questions geared toward the respondents’ observations within the past year of specific behaviors by college students (See Appendix E). There will be three filter questions to determine if the respondent is a current college student at Kutztown University, if so, are they a current full time day student and if the respondent has resided in the borough for at least one year. If the respondent is a current, full time day student at the University or has not resided in the borough for at least one year, then the survey will be discarded in an effort not to skew results. Those behavior questions will be the number of times the respondents observed college students being publicly intoxicated, engage in physical violence, go to parties where there was loud music, vandalize, litter, urinate in public, loiter or where the respondent became a victim of a crime as a result of a college student. The number of instances will be scale as zero occurrences, one to three occurrences, four to six occurrences, seven to nine occurrences and ten or more occurrences. Each group of occurrences will be assigned a number from one up to five. One will represent zero occurrences and five would represent ten or more occurrences. A completed survey could have a possible score of zero up to forty.
The quality of life will be broken down into five categories; very good, good, fair, poor and very poor. I will use the following scores to determine the quality of life: 0-8 would represent very good, 9-16 would represent good, 17-24 would represent fair, 25-32 would represent poor and 33-40 would represent very poor (See Appendix E). The indicators I used to determine the quality of life are peacefulness, happiness and tranquility.
Upon totaling these results, I will have also obtained statistics from the Kutztown Borough Police Department pertaining to the number of complaints received pertaining to the above name eight behaviors. I am able to easily obtain these statistics due to working with these various police officers as a Pennsylvania State Police Officer. These statistics will be compared to the total survey results. The results of the survey should show a correlation between the complaints received by the police department. A high number of complaints should correspond to a poor quality of life and vice versa.
Spuriousness should not be a factor in this proposal due to the specific nature of the questions. However, if a high number of police complaints do not reflect a poor quality of life then there may be some third variable that was not determined. Time order should also not be a factor. Some respondents may have been living in the borough for less than one year; however, a filter question will be used to determine if the surveyed residents have resided in the borough for at least one year.
Conclusion
It is important in most cities, boroughs and towns for residents to be satisfied with where they live. Councilmen and mayors across the country often base their entire political campaigns on the concerns of residents. Most communities have monthly council meetings where residents can voice their concerns. This research is simply an effort to study if a concern exists. Do the university students negatively impact the lives of borough residents? That is what this study is attempting to find out. If the students do have an adverse impact, as I theorize, then a study such as this may be the starting point for more police officers, more campus security and increased school activities. In this study, I intend to test my theory that many of the borough residents are greatly affected by the deviant activities of these students. If the results are as I predict, then there is a definite and legitimate concern that the borough of Kutztown may need to address.
References
Wechsler, Henry; Lee, Jae Eun; Hall, John. 2002. “Secondhand Effects of Student
Alcohol Use Reported By Neighbors of Colleges: The Role of Alcohol Outlets.” SocialScience and Medicine. 55:425-435.
Holder, Harry D.; Reynolds, Robert I. 1997. “Application of Local Policy to Prevent
Alcohol Problems: Experiences from a Community Trial.” Addiction. 92:S285-
S292.
Myers, Daniel J.; Buoye, Alexander J. 2001. “Campus Racial Disorders and Community
Ties, 1967-1969.” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change. 23: 297-
327.
Fernandez-Lanier, Adriana. 1999. “Crime in the Ivory Tower.” The Humanities and
Social Sciences. 60(6): 2234A.
Volkwein, J. Fredericks; Szelest, Bruce P.; Lizotte, Alan J. 1995. “The Relationship of
Campus Crime to Campus and StudentUniversities.” Research in Higher
Education. 36(6): 647-670.
Kleniewski, Nancy. 1999. “Changing Communities and Changing Universities: Why
Should We Care? What Can We Do?” Research in Politics and Society. 7: 3-17.
Amada, Gerald. 1997. “The Disruptive College Student: Recent Trends and Practical
Advice.” Journal of College Student Psychotherapy. 11(4): 57-67.
Reichman, Michela. 1980. “Resolving Campus-Community Conflicts.” New Directions
for Institutional Advancement. 10: 79-92.
Scarpa, Angela; Fikretoglu, Deniz; Bowser, Felicia; Hurley, Jimmy D.; Pappert, Caroline
A.; Romero, Nancy; Van Voorhees, Elizabeth. 2002. “Community Violence Exposure in University Students: A Replication and Extension.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence. 17 (3): 253-272.
Pincus, Fred L. & Ehrlich, Howard J. 1994. Campus Ethnoviolence. Prejudice Instit:
Prejudice Instit.
Appendix A: Time Schedule
September 24, 2004 – October 3, 2004:
-Make copies of cover letter, informed consent forms and surveys
-Place all documents into self addressed stamped envelops and mailing
October 4, 2004 – December 1, 2004:
-Evaluate returned surveys
-Prepare reminder/follow up letters and surveys (if necessary)
December 2, 2004 –January 14, 2004:
-Evaluate additional surveys (if necessary)
-Formulate conclusions
-Tabulate results
Estimated time schedule 16 weeks.
Appendix B: Budget
Mailing Surveys to 200 Random Residents:
-200 surveys (@ $.05 per copy)$10.00
-400 informed consent forms (@ $.05 per copy)$20.00
-200 cover letters (@ $.05 per copy)$10.00
-400 envelopes (@ $1.00 per 70)$6.00
-400 stamps (@ $.37 each)$148.00
-1 round to Kutztown (gas @1.70 per gallon)$3.40
Total estimated costs:$197.40
Possible Additional Costs for Reminder Surveys:
-50 surveys (@ $.05 per copy)$2.50
- 100 informed consent forms (@ $.05 per copy)$5.00
-50 cover letters (@ $.05 per copy)$2.50
-100 envelopes (@ $1.00 per 70)$2.00
-100 stamps (@ $.37 each)$37.00
Total estimated costs if reminder surveys are required:$49.00
Estimated grand total including reminder surveys:$246.40
*All labor will be conducted by myself, hence, no salaries are included.