Texas A&M University
EN-6: Assessing Sustainability Culture

The cultural assessment was created by Office of Sustainability staff. We looked at similar assessments done by STARS peers as a starting point and then integrated our own specific TAMU questions. We combined the assessment of culture and literacy into one survey instrument.

We just completed our first survey of the campus community during the Fall 2016 semester, so we do not yet have a follow-up survey completed. However, we designed the survey to be administered annually and will be completing a follow-up assessment during the Fall 2017 semester and in subsequent years moving forward.

See attached document.

We worked with the Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Evaluation (experts in designing and deploying surveys for our campus community) to design and administer the survey. They used email to randomly sample a representative portion of the entire campus community (students, faculty, and staff). The survey was sent as a qualtrics link to randomly selected campus members. While our sample was representative of the entire student body our response rate for students was not high enough for the results to be considered representative at a 95% confidence interval. The response rates for faculty and staff were high enough to meet the 95% confidence interval.

Results of the study are evaluated by Office of Sustainability Staff and are used to better understand areas of both strength and weakness in regards to the campus sustainability culture. We will share these results with our Sustainability Advisory Council and use them to make improvements. Highlights from the 2016 survey include: 95.93% of our campus community thinks sustainability is very or somewhat important, 86.7% thinks Climate Change is is very or somewhat important, 87.19% think biodiversity loss is very or somewhat important, 90.68% think social justice and equity are very or somewhat important, and 82.7% think diversity and inclusion are very or somewhat important. 88.26% of our campus community always or mostly uses reusable bottles or mugs, 59.36% always or mostly takes shorter showers, 39.7% eats less meat always or mostly, 97.95% turns off the lights in unused rooms always or mostly, 81.22% always or mostly recycles, and 33% participates in diversity and cultural activities always or most of the time. 92.57% of our campus community thinks it is very or somewhat important to incorporate sustainability into their everyday lives.

Due to a low response rate from students our results cannot be considered representative of the entire student body even though our sample pool was representative of the student body. This was our first year administering the survey, so we will refine our methods to increase response rates in subsequent years.

Faculty and Staff response rate was high enough to be considered representative of TAMU.