This post was updated July 9 at 12:35 p.m.
UCLA researchers will launch a new app that aims to better understand the campus climate, which includes a variety of factors that contribute to students’ experience at UCLA.
BruinX, the research and development branch of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, finished beta testing their new app, BruinXperience, last month. UCLA undergraduate and graduate students can start using the app fall quarter.
The app will remind students every two weeks to complete a two-item survey which asks them to select a picture that best describes how they feel at that moment, then provides a text box for them to explain their choice.
Carli Straight, a research scientist for BruinX, said collecting survey responses more frequently will be advantageous because students can remember recent personal events more accurately.
Data can also be collected in closer proximity to specific events to observe how opinions change before and after the event.
She added that the app allows students to directly tell administrative officials about what affects their experience on campus.
“We not only ask students to report how they feel but why they feel the way they do, giving them the platform to tell us, in their own words, what affects them,” Straight said.
Lauren Ilano, a research analyst at Student Affairs Information and Research Office, said she thinks collecting data more frequently could help improve programs that use campus climate data.
“Having more campus climate data collected at closer intervals could potentially help departments make adjustments to their programming,” Ilano said. “Campus climate issues are extremely important and having more regular data is one way to assess initiatives in real time.”
Lena Nguyen, a rising second-year political science and pre-communication student, said she thinks BruinXperience will make the campus climate survey process more convenient for students.
“(Past campus climate surveys) just never came up,” Nguyen said. “But I would do it if I saw it online or on my phone because it’s faster.”
Straight also said that BruinXperience will not replace existing survey infrastructure, which includes traditional, more in-depth quarterly surveys.
“Information collected from both short-interval and annual surveys will contribute to a more complete understanding of students’ perceptions of campus climate,” she said.