How Students Pick Their Housing Situations: Factors and Analysis

Abstract

To learn about why students choose to move out of university provided housing, Kefei and Anthony conducted a research about five factors that students consider when choosing their living situations. During our research, we interviewed with an expert from the university, reviewed some past research studies, conducted three focus groups to gather qualitative data, and sent out online surveys to collect quantitative data. Our major hypothesis was that students considered rent as the most important factor and safety as the least important factor when they made their housing decisions. However, we found that nearly all participants of our online survey considered safety as the most important factor. At the end of this paper, we offered some explanations and policy implications to the University Housing Department based on what we learned from the research.