Every year, as part of my class–Quantitative Analysis in Political Science–we field a poll of Bowdoin students that focuses on important issues relevant to students in that semester. I’ve dubbed our effort the “Polar Poll,” after Bowdoin’s mascot, the Polar Bear. This year we went back to some older surveys and re-asked some questions from prior semesters. The top-line results are located below (Click on the link at the bottom of this post, titled “Initial_Report(031424”).

One issue we’ve encountered in recent years is a decline in the response rates from students. We email a random sample of Bowdoin students, usually between 500 and 700. This year we randomly emailed 700, but our response rates were lower than in past years. We even tried to field the survey at an earlier point in the semester, knowing that other departments and offices on campus often ask students to fill out surveys. I’ll keep experimenting with ideas for boosting response rates in future semesters, and this might include a small number of “gift card” rewards to a few random participants. But here, too, students seem somewhat jaded by this option, and it might take a bit more shoe-leather on campus to spread the word about our poll and encourage sampled students to take the survey.

I hope you enjoy looking through the results.