UHS Student Health Assessment Undergoes Changes

University Health Services’ biyearly student health assessment—which was distributed to undergraduates last Friday via e-mail—has undergone noteworthy revisions since it was last administered in 2008.

Wellness Center Director Jeanne M. Mahon said that the alterations to the poll—which asks about students’ behavioral and physical health as well as their awareness of programs offered by UHS—were targeted toward improving the quality of data UHS receives from the survey.

In the previous five cycles of the poll, UHS had used the exact questions from the National College Health Assessment, a widely-used survey created by the American College Health Association. But this year, Mahon said, UHS worked with other Ivy League universities—particularly the University of Pennsylvania—to create a survey more directly tailored to its students.

Mahon, who was involved in the editing process, said that administrators at UHS had opted to exclude questions of less relevance to Harvard students, such as those about student driving habits while at college.

She added that those editing the survey had aimed to “look at many different areas, and formulate our own questions, some of which were similar to those in the national survey and some that we wanted to include for Harvard.”

In addition to a change to the content of the poll, students who complete the survey were able to choose to receive a five-dollar J.P. Licks gift card or make a five-dollar donation to a Haitian orphanage. In previous years, only a small portion of students received rewards, and previously there has not been a philanthropic option.

UHS Director David S. Rosenthal ’59 said that UHS officials hoped that the new rewards program would entice more students to participate in the survey.

According to Rosenthal, about 1,140 students have completed the survey since last Friday, roughly two thirds of whom have opted to donate to Haiti. Rosenthal added that the current response numbers comprise a little less than half of the students needed to meet the response rate target of 40 percent. The assessment will remain open for another week.

“I think the most important thing is trying to get a good percentage of students to fill out the form,” Rosenthal said. “We can always see some things just by people coming into UHS, but it doesn’t give us a full picture.”

—Staff writer Evan T. R. Rosenman can be reached at erosenm@fas.harvard.edu.