The University of Connecticut’s Student Health and Wellness (SHaW) introduced its Student Wellness Check-In Survey, designed to “better understand [the] experiences and needs [of students],” according to an email sent to students by SHaW. The questionnaire will be used to shape future health and wellness resources across campus.
SHaW began distributing its survey in waves during the 2024-25 academic year through Qualtrics, a web-based survey platform. This October, SHaW’s executive director, Suzanne Onorato, emailed selected students asking them “for just 5-10 minutes of [their] time to complete the UConn Student Wellness Check-In Survey.”
“The survey is sent via email with a personal invitation to participate, and reminders are sent throughout the survey period,” Onorato said. “Last year’s response rates exceeded our expectations. We believe keeping the survey short with the opportunity for students to share experiences and influence campus health and wellness resources has been beneficial to student participation rates.”
According to Onorato, all students at the regional campuses, half of Storrs graduate students enrolled in in-person programs and 2,500 Storrs undergraduate students have already received the survey. She noted that SHaW plans to continue contacting the rest of the students throughout the year.
Students who have already received the survey were asked a multitude of questions about topics ranging from mental health to access of care. First-semester marketing major Sydney Matthews reflected on filling out the questionnaire.
“I received an email on the first day of October asking me to fill out a survey from SHaW, and while I was confused at first, I decided to fill it out,” Matthews said. “It was honestly a good check-in on my stress, mental health and physical health, and I appreciated it.”
To encourage questionnaire participation, responses to the survey remain completely anonymous, which allows organizers to best analyze the data.
During the 2024-25 academic year, the Student Wellness Check-in Survey highlighted a population of students struggling with their well-being. Due to this data, SHaW was able to collaborate with campus partners to make their data collection more effective and inclusive, according to Onorato.
“This [partnership] provides an opportunity for SHaW to enhance our patient-centered services, and allows for us to share aggregated, de-identified population data in collaboration with campus partners in order to advocate for proactive allocation of resources to support student success,” Onorato said.
The results of the survey will be essential for both SHaW and UConn programs and policies in the coming years. The data is intended to guide the university’s decisions about health and wellness resources on campus.
“We are particularly interested in collecting actionable data that tells us how and where students choose to seek care and what barriers they experience,” Onorato said. “Examples of barriers could include cost, lack of transportation or simply not knowing where to go. We anticipate that barriers will differ between campuses and even among sub-populations on the same campus. We are prepared to respond to those needs as they become known to us.”