University Organizations Research Article

Jerrika Midkiff, Eduardo Lerma, Matthew Ruiz, Lauren Verdi, Vanessa Mora
Professor Prisca Ngondo
MC 3360 | Public Relations Research
Tuesday/Thursday 3:30 p.m. to 4:50 p.m.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Literature Review
Suggestions for Further Studies
Selecting the Method (Advantages & Disadvantages)
Participant-Posed Questions

INTRODUCTION
With campus organizations constantly being added to Texas State University, Supreme
wanted to delve into why students decide to join or not join organizations on campus.
Through this research, we will also be attempting to determine which factors and methods
are best suited for recruiting new members as well as which are best suited for retaining an
organizations existing members; helping organizations recruit new members and raise their
retention rates. We will ascertain the potential answers regarding the basis of our research by
surveying a convenient sampling of individuals who we can reach that currently attend or
have attended Texas State. Campus organizations can be a crucial part of shaping a students
college career. It has been found that almost every student who was a member of an
organization has benefited in many ways, such as: leadership skills, communication skills
and professional growth (Hegedous & Knight,2002). Future student organizations, fighting to
establish themselves on Texas States campus, stand to benefit greatly from the findings of
this study. The research we conduct will aim to reveal strategies that organizations can utilize
in order, not only to recruit new members, but also to be able to effectively maintain those
new memberships which will foster more long-term members. This cycle of recruit and
maintain is arguably one of the most important topics for any organization, student or
otherwise, if that group has any hope to remain functioning.
Social media is quickly becoming the communication outlet of the world, but we need to
determine which channels are most appropriate for student organizations to utilize.
Information presented herein will not only help an organization recruit smarter, but will also
allow the organization to communicate more effectively with those they recruit in perpetuity
of their membership.

Literature Review
At times, simply figuring out how to communicate with its own members or potential
members can be an organizations biggest obstacle. Social media has undoubtedly become
one of the most effective ways to communicate with an audience. This concept may seem
obvious to most, yet, many organizations habitually rely upon the use of antiquated forms of
communication such as writing letters or even passing out flyers (Chalmers &
Schotton,2016). Considering the amount of time students spend daily on social media, any
organization reaching out to their members, existing and potential, is likely at a much greater
advantage to those who do not; in terms of recruitment and member retention.
Wang, Chen and Liang (2011) drew from a random sampling of 48 college students, 26
males and 22 females, who were upper-classmen involved in campus organizations. The
researchers in this study emphasized that being involved in organizations on campus is
essential to personal growth and leadership. An organizations ability to be professional was
stressed by the authors. That is to say that some of the older, more experienced leaders, who
are needed for the growth of an organization, will not be intrigued by an unprofessional
environment consisting of unorganized meetings or events; therefore, it is imperative to be
professional if you are an organization from whom professionalism should be expected. The
researchers brought up a good argument regarding GPA, recruiting members with a lower
GPA may allow them to become more engaged in their school work and introduce them to
older students that share the same major and could assist them in their studies. In the student
perception questionnaire administered by Wang, Chen and Liang (2011), they also wanted a
better understanding of how social media affects college students. The study supports the
idea that students are much more perceptive to social media even in the face of other tasks.

For example, one student spent over six hours checking social media site and responded
while completing their homework. Social media is clearly an environment in which an
organization potentially has their audiences undivided attention (Wang, Chen, Liang, 2011)
Our research has revealed that college students were likely to be affected by social media.
Social media is attractive; it not only provides college students another world to make
friends, also provides a good way to release pressure. (P. 8)
In order to build a more solid foundation on which to build our research and findings, we
elected to explore related studies that have already been conducted. Upon reading other
research articles, we discovered that the main reason why students tend to not join
organizations is because they do not offer enough professional/future benefits. On the other
hand, students are joining them because of the leadership opportunities and the social aspect
organizations provide. In past research, they determined that age can be huge determining
factor in students deciding to join. This also tends to determine how long they remain active
in an organization. The younger the student is, the more likely they are to join. Age 18-20 is
the most active age in most college organizations (Hegedous & Knight, 2002).
Another article we analyzed by Becky Smith (1967), examined the extent of student
participation in campus organizations and the reasons for nonparticipation. They wanted to
see how factors like gender, grade point average, proximity of residence, marital status and
employment affect a students desire to participate in campus activities and extracurricular
activities. This study hypothesized that a lot of dissatisfaction and nonparticipation in campus
activities originated from the organizations strategies itself. Smith (1967) said the factors
contributing to dissatisfaction include: lack of time for participation, unawareness of
meeting times, lack of invitation to membership, lack of money for joining and participating,

and failure of meetings to arouse and hold interest. Lack of time for participation is seen to
be the major reason. (P. 222)

Previous Research Methods

Becky Smith (1967) used a total of 110 junior students were selected from a master list of
165 students. The 110 students were contacted via telephone and were asked to complete the
questionnaire at one of the two questionnaire administrations.
Chalmers and Shutton (2016) conducted research in which a survey-based method was
utilized for a random sampling of 1,219 organizations out of a population size of 5,484.
However, they only received 30% of the responses expected. Out of the ones they received,
they contacted their organization to verify their responses.
Hegedus and Knight (2002) designed a 31 question survey based on the Likert scale to
help determine why students join or do not join organizations. The study utilized the
population of students that were in a CALS class in spring 2012.

Suggestions for Further Studies

Research suggests that the media has become a dominant factor in terms of interest
organizations. Chalmers and Shutton (2016) explain that most organizations use social media
tools to communicate with their members. In order to help improve involvement in
organizations, it is important to utilize social media tools being that they have become an
effective means of communication. An organization may spend time attempting to find ways
of allowing individuals to better connect with them, however, most social media networks
already make those avenues of connection possible. Several recommendations can be

suggested for leaders of organizations, campus advisors and Greek officers. It is important to
investigate the effects that social media has on college students. Identifying these can help in
determining a correlation between student organizations and the use of social media tools.
An area of interest, regarding our own study, which has not yet been explored much in
terms of formal research is what exactly causes students in an organization to remain an
active member of that organization for the duration of their college career. It is our opinion
that member retention is a factor which can contribute immensely to the success of any
organization, causing member retention to be a factor which needs more in depth research.
Our goal, through research, is to help discover why students choose to stay or not stay in
their organization. It is our hope that organizations will be able to improve their recruitment
and member retention rates through the fine tuning of their practices in this area by way of
utilizing the information we gather and discuss within this study.

Methodology
In order to find solutions to the problems posed herein, we first needed to get a picture, if
you will, of the conditions and attitudes of active, alumnus, inactive and potential
organization members. Because of this need to describe attitudes and behaviors of our target
participants, we chose to utilize the method of a descriptive survey. The survey is a webbased and is conducted among a convenient sample of Texas State University students and
recent graduates. The survey consists of 10 questions total: three open-ended and seven
close-ended with two asking for an explanation. Multiple responses from the same device
will not be accepted.
An advantage of this method was the amount of people we would be able to get responses
from the fastest, as well as us knowing most of our sample. The further the reach of our

survey, the more accurate our research is likely to be. Another advantage we have from our
survey is using open-ended questions. This will give us a better insight into the minds of our
respondents. We also chose an online survey because of its convenience. College students are
the target of our research and we do not have an incentive to make them come in for a
research group.
While this method presented many advantages, we found there to be disadvantages as
well. In a focus group you get to ask questions in depth, but using an online survey we do not
get to do that. In an online survey, while using open-ended questions is a good thing, we can
also get fake responses or ones that dont fit into a category. Thus meaning we might not be
able to use all of our responses. Online surveys also limit our reach to the people we know
and the people that use social media. Even though tons of people have Facebook, we are
leaving out the ones that do not.
RQ1: What is the best channel for organizations to recruit new members?
RQ2: What factors help organizations at Texas State University retain members?
These are some of the survey questions we have planned to ask. We feel that these
questions will help us get a better understanding of why college students join organization
and what makes them stay. We also felt that it was vital to our research to determine why
they chose not to join an organization or if the organization stood up to what they wanted to
get out of being a part of it. Through our questions we made sure to ask if they were in a
student organization or not and if their age to help organize our responses better. Our reach as
college students is other students and recent graduates; this is why we have an advantage
with a topic about college organizations. We will be able to reach students who have and
have not participated in college organizations, thus giving us a better understanding of a

student's opinion on organizations as a whole and the benefits, or lack thereof, of being in
one. Participants were first asked whether or not they are/were involvement in student
organization. A large majority (91%) had been involved, at one point or another, with a
student organization.
Participants were then asked to give an open-ended response explaining why they did or
did not join an organization. Based on the open ended responses, we were able to then create
categories for the reasons individuals did or did not join an organization; some participants
listed multiple reasons as to why they did or did not join. The categories created for Reasons
for Joining are as follows: Make Friends, Be Involved, Be Part of a Community, Socialize,
Meet Like-Minded Individuals, Career Betterment, Networking, Philanthropic Opportunities,
Personal Betterment, Scholastic Requirement, Be Part of Sport-Based Org, Have an Outlet
Not School Related and Other. The category of Other was originally defined by seven
individually named categories. However, these seven categories only accounted for a 5.43%
cumulative percentage and were deemed statistically insignificant. The same categorization
process was followed for responses that identified reasons as to why an individual did not
join/quit an organization and those categories are: Job(s), Not Interested, Did Not Like Org
Member(s), Shyness, In a Relationship, Too Demanding, High Org Cost(s) and
Noncommittal. Once the categories had been created from the open-ended responses to the
second question, we then went back through responses and tallied up the number of times a
given reason occurred. To reiterate, some participants did not provide a singular reason per
their response to this question which caused the total number of times a reason occurred to be
greater than 100. In order to make the best sense of our categorized and tallied data, we chose
to employ the concept known as The Pareto principle (80/20 rule).

References and Citations

Adam William Chalmers & Paul Alexander Shotton (2016) Changing the Face of
Advocacy?
Explaining Interest Organization, Use of Social Media Strategies, Political
Communication, 33:3, 374-391, DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2015.1043477
Christine M. Hegedus & Dr. James Knight (2002) Student Participation in Collegiate
Organizations Expanding the Boundaries, University of Arizona Pages 1-8
Retrieved from:
http://www.leadershipeducators.org/Resources/Documents/Conferences/Lexingto
n/Hegedus.pdf
Chapter research factors affecting participation in campus organizations. (1967).
Educational Horizons, 45(4), 219-223. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.txstate.edu/stable/42923558
Peter Totterdell, David Holman, Amy Hukin, Social networkers: Measuring and
examining
individual differences in propensity to connect with others, Social Networks,
Volume
30, Issue 4, October 2008, Pages 283-296, ISSN 0378-8733,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2008.04.003.
Qingya Wang, Wei Chen, Yu Liang, The Effects of Social Media on College Students
(2011)
MBA Student Scholarship. Paper 5
Retrieved from http://scholarsarchive.jwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1004&context=mba_student