The list of surveys being administered to students by Baker University continues to grow, as one focusing on health will soon join the many others being conducted on campus.

This latest survey will ask students questions about their health habits and perception of overall student health.

“Some of the questions will ask students if they drink, if they smoke or if they exercise,” said Judy Smrha, assistant dean of institutional effectiveness. “Some students may be put off by the frankness of the questions they are being asked to answer, but they need to remember everything is anonymous.”

The health survey will be administered online. Students will receive invitations to participate via e-mail around the middle of April.

Associate Professor of Sociology Timothy Buzzell conducted a similar survey earlier in the semester.

This was referred to as the CORE survey, which only selected students participated in. This survey’s focuses were substance abuse and violence.

Some of the other surveys being administered are focusing more on educational life at Baker, such as the academic advising survey.

“You will get the survey from your academic adviser,” Smrha said. “Students probably won’t get them until next week when they contact their advisers.”

This survey will be distributed as an actual paper copy rather than online. To encourage participation, the university is even sending surveys to students studying abroad and students who are graduating and will not see their advisers this semester.

Another survey active on campus is the NSSE, or National Survey of Student Engagement. It was open by invitation only to freshmen and seniors who were enrolled at Baker during the fall 2006 semester.

“An organization creates the survey, and we contract with that organization,” she said. “We use student e-mail accounts to contact the target audience. When you get the e-mail, it says please do this and click here to go to this Web site.”

The biggest survey administered at Baker recently was a stakeholder survey to help create a brand image for the university.

“What we’re working on is an integrated marketing plan,” said Annette Galluzzi, vice president for marketing. “That means all of the schools of Baker will be coming together to put out some common messages to speak to the image of the school.”

Galluzzi said now is an important time to do the survey, since all four Baker schools are growing rapidly, and it is important for all of them to be unified.

“It’s a way to get us all on the same page and singing the same tune,” she said.

However, Smrha said the university sometimes runs into some problems with surveys. One of the biggest, she said, is student participation.

“For purely voluntary surveys, historically you are lucky to get 15 to 20 percent of people to do it,” she said. “There’s always the dilemma of how to make people feel motivated, but you don’t want the motivation to bias the way people answer the survey. You don’t want to bribe people so they just click the answer, but don’t really care.”

Smrha said the university has decided to offer a prize drawing for students who participate in the health survey.

“We thought people might need some sort of incentive because it will be longer and more time consuming than other ones,” she said.