The University Housing and Dining Services Residence Hall Satisfaction Survey, which launched on Nov. 1, had already received 254 responses as of Friday.

The lengthy survey asks questions about every aspect of on-campus living with easy-to-answer choices like strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, or not applicable.

There is also a comment box after each section of the survey in order to add detail to what a resident dislikes about a given area.

“We get about 100 pages of comments and read them all,” Kelly Miller, assistant director of Housing, said. “For the most part, they’re pretty helpful.”

Miller said when they receive a complaint in the survey, they address it and the next time the survey is done, the satisfaction rates rise.

Last year, the bathrooms in Douglas and Lincoln halls were remodeled after numerous complaints from the survey conducted in the fall of 2008.

“Douglas was the worst, so we started there and then moved on to Lincoln,” Mark Hudson, director of University Housing and Dining, said. “We work in order of what the results say.”

Hudson said the question in the survey that matters the most to him is “I enjoy living in the residence halls,” whether or not students enjoy living in the residence halls.

“In 2002, that number was 84 percent, rose to 90 percent in 2004, was 93 percent in 2006 and stayed at 93 percent in 2008,” Hudson said.

The survey has not changed much from the original in 2002 in order to keep the responses consistent historically, Miller said.

This year, they added a question about how students prefer to receive communication, be it via mail, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter.

“The base core of the questions were created at a previous university I worked at,” Hudson said. “I worked with RHA to come up with appropriate questions for Eastern, which we tweak a little every year.”

The survey was sent out to 1,300 randomly selected on-campus residents.

“It’s like an organized random selection (for who receives the survey),” Miller said.

Miller said past data has shown that women are more likely to respond than men, so more surveys are sent out to men. More surveys are also sent to residents of smaller buildings to get a proportional response rate.

After all of the results are compiled and analyzed, the Housing and Dining staff makes a list of the top five things that need to be fixed and a plan of action is written for each.

“Major changes are done through our central office,” Miller said.

Each unit gets the results pertaining to their work, such as facilities or residence hall life. From there, the units are to decide what their plan of action will be to increase satisfaction, Hudson said.

“All of the facilities issues go to facilities,” Hudson said. “The director of Lawson gets everything from Lawson residents.”

Once it is decided what is going to change due to the results, all students will receive a brochure with the highlights of the results, interesting facts, what is being planned to change, what is in the works of being changed and recent housing projects completed in the past year.

“We usually have a 40 percent return rate by the end,” Hudson said. “The higher the return, the better. We’re very motivated to help students.”

The survey is open until Nov. 17.

“We encourage students to participate in this survey,” Miller said. “It’s important because it affects their living environment.”

Ashley Holstrom can be reached at 581-7942 or alholstrom@eiu.edu.