This 142-page study presents data from a representative survey of 1,765 full time college students at 4-year colleges in the United States about their use of group study rooms provided by academic libraries. The report presents highly detailed data on student incidence and frequency of use, and their evaluation of the importance of and quality of the rooms provided. In open ended questions, survey participants comment on what they most like and dislike about their college library’s group study rooms. They also comment on the ease or difficulty in reserving group study rooms.
Data is broken out by more than 20 institutional and personal variables including but not limited to: income of family of origin, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, regional origins, current employment status, sexual orientation, major field of study, age, year of school standing, type of college, size of college, tuition level of college, and many other variables.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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Nearly 60% of full time undergraduate students in US colleges who grew up outside of the United States have ever reserved a group study room in the academic library at their college or university.
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Students in certificate or non-degree programs used the group study rooms in their academic libraries a mean of 1.64 times in the past year.
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Broken out by major field of study, students studying occupational or physical therapy, nursing, public health, nutrition and other health-oriented professions had by far the highest opinion of the value of group study rooms.