Examining Participants’ Survey and Interview Responses
Author: Maci Angles | Major: Exercise Science | Semester: Fall 2023
My name is Maci Angles, and I am part of the College of Education and Health Professions (COEHP) as an exercise science major. My mentor for this project is Dr. Erin Kaye Howie Hickey, whose department is Health, Human Performance, and Recreation (HHPR). Since I joined her lab in September 2022, I have assisted in various projects. Examples include exploration of the effects of HIIT exercise on cognitive function in children, increasing physical activity in staff and students across campus, and the most recent project being the investigation of the feasibility of walking academic advising meetings, which will be my focus for my honors thesis. I am conducting research in fall 2023 and spring 2024, with plans to graduate in the spring of 2024. My future plans are to attend physical therapy school for the next 3 years and work as a physical therapist.
Research so far has consisted of implementing walking advising sessions with several academic advisors, and surveying and interviewing the participating students and advisors to determine the feasibility of making walking advising sessions a long-term option. Our hope is that these walking meetings can be a solution to advisor burnout and lack of physical activity, along with boosting students’ moods, stress levels, confidence in their academic career, and other psychological markers.
This topic came to life by combining other research members’ passion for physical activity in the workplace, along with my desire to further research and find solutions to the pervasive issue of students’ poor mental health and stress. After several weeks of data collection, surveys, and interviews, one thing I learned is how complex any type of research involving humans can be. It’s important to be flexible, understanding, helpful, and have the expectation that things will not always go exactly as planned. We needed people’s cooperation in order to obtain data, but some challenges included advisors working from home some days, students choosing traditional office meetings rather than walking meetings, and surveys not always being completed, sometimes resulting in a lack of data for us to analyze. Something that seemed to be generally agreed upon is that giving the option of walking meetings has enormous potential to be beneficial to both students and advisors, provided that both of their needs are met and the transition from office meetings is made as seamless as possible. Advisors seemed to enjoy getting outside on nice days and having the opportunity to get some physical activity, and students seemed to appreciate the less intimidating atmosphere.
A graduate student helped organize and implement the majority of this project, while our faculty mentor offered support wherever needed. Several other undergraduate students were involved, and everyone in the group cooperated and took on different roles to help support the completion of data collection.
In the upcoming spring semester, our research group plans to carefully reflect and investigate how our first trial of walking advising meetings was implemented, so that we can hopefully improve logistics and increase participation as we plan to move forward with walking advising sessions. We will analyze the feedback we received from past participants’ surveys and interviews in order to figure out which aspects went well, and which ones could use improvement. Hopefully we will conduct another trial of walking sessions, so we can further determine the long-term feasibility of this project. The honors college grant has been a huge help regarding incentive options for participants; without incentive it would be very difficult to obtain willing participants. Our ultimate goal as we move forward is to help ease the burden on academic advisors, who are sitting at their desk all day with back-to-back meetings, with little to no opportunities to move around, as well as decreasing the prevalence of poor mental health in college students.