Women, Commuters, and Introverts
How gender, personality, and distance shape student experiences.
Hola everybody, Mohammed here! As you know, we surveyed 530 of you lovely people between 21st October - 3rd November. We thought it would only be fair to share some of our most interesting findings with you, as well as some analysis/hypothesising around what we learned.
Before we get into that good stuff, here is some background into Chillsy, and why we think it’s important to share this information.
Our goal is to increase young people’s sense of belonging and fulfilment by giving them greater access to opportunities and spaces to meaningfully connect with amazing people.
Understanding who needs this the most, why their current experience is lacking, and where the opportunities are, is key to making this happen successfully and at scale.
Our hope is that by sharing our findings, we can empower you to make better decisions around your social experiences, and understand that if things aren’t great right now, you are not alone.
Our key parameters for friendship experience at university were: Satisfaction with experiences making friends at university, satisfaction with the quality of friendships, satisfaction with the number of friendships.
Male vs. Female
Female students generally have a lower level of satisfaction across ease of making friends, number of friends, and quality of their friendships.
From our research, it was surprising to see the considerable differences between the overall satisfaction male and female respondents experienced We dug into the literature, and found this is likely connected to the different ways men and women approach friendship.
Fig 1. % of respondents dissatisfied with friendship experiences by gender
Why women may find it harder to make friends than men:
The female approach to friendship seems to rely more heavily on face-to-face interactions, offering support and connection while sharing emotions and thoughts. Conversely, men tend to have a more side-to-side approach to friendships, with emphasis on engaging in a shared activity, typically within in larger groups. Engaging in group activities rather than 1-1 interactions then potentially creates a network effect, where it is easier to meet new people and widen one’s network by virtue of people being part of multiple groups.
It could be argued that it’s easier to find an activity or group than find the time and space to connect with someone more intimately.
Why female students tend to have fewer friends than men:
Well, we already know that it’s harder for females to make friends, but interestingly it is also more difficult for females to keep their friends. A key finding from our research was that male friendships are generally less fragile and sensitive than female friendships. That is, a guy can go weeks, months, or even years without meeting someone and still consider them a close friend upon meeting them again.
On the other hand, female friendships typically require a higher frequency of quality face-to-face intimate interactions. When there are extended periods of no contact, it is more likely for females to assume they have grown apart and the other person is no longer interested in friendship.
Another element in fragility is resistance to stress. Male friendships are more likely to have antagonistic elements, with taunting and competitiveness. However, at the same time, males are more likely to forgive. On the other hand, an off-colour comment is more likely to spell the end of a friendship for females.
Why men may have higher quality friendships than women:
We have 2 primary hypotheses for why males tend to perceive their friendships as higher quality than females.
Men have lower standards for friendship. The barrier to becoming a close friend for a male seems to be generally lower. On the other hand, females require time and space to be vulnerable and share ideas and feelings with one another.
Male friendships are generally less fragile, and potentially feel more secure to those within them.
Living situation differences
Another important relationship that surprised us was the connection between the living situation and friendship experiences. Specifically, those who commute to university generally have worse friendship experiences than those who live in university halls or on campus. Those who lived with family typically had it the worst.
Fig 2. Proportion of students who found it difficult to make friends by living situation
Our research found that this may have been the case primarily for the following reasons.
Commuter time:
Not living on campus means that students have less available time on any given day for socialising or engaging in student life. Spending 1 hour a day travelling to and from uni may not seem that significant, but over the course of 3 years, it adds up and makes a large difference.
Many commuter students dream of the perfect timetable, with Fridays off. They simultaneously dread the nightmare timetable where they have to travel all the way to uni, only to attend a 2-hour compulsory lab. As such it can be assumed that commuter students have higher standards for on-campus engagement, from lectures to initiatives, because the cost of driving 30 minutes, finding parking and taking a bus is far more taxing than rolling out of bed and walking 5 minutes.
Essentially, it’s harder to make friends on campus when being on campus is hard.
Living situation
Students living in university dorms or halls tend to make considerably more friends than those who live with family. By virtue of living in a brand new place, with a number of new people and a loss of support network, a transition from inherited families to chosen families occurs. Commuting students on the other hand typically make fewer new connections at university, because they can still access their “Inherited family ”.
Otago students are the most socially satisfied!
Fig 3. % Students who found it difficult to make friends by university
Another key factor we identified was the difference in friendship satisfaction, based on which university students attended. Each university has a unique make-up, in terms of qualifications offered, diversity, the city in which it’s located, where students live etc. There are in fact so many factors, that we wouldn’t even feel comfortable making any strong claims as to why some unis are better than others. However, we did find that the University of Otago had the highest satisfaction with friend-making experiences. This does fit somewhat with our understanding, considering the number of students who live on campus, and the general party culture/identity.
Introverts vs. Ambiverts vs. Extroverts
This one seems sort of obvious. We found that those who reported as introverts found it significantly more challenging to make friends than ambiverts and extroverts. Interestingly however, ambiverts and introverts were much closer in terms of friend number satisfaction and friend quality satisfaction. This was most pronounced in the proportion who missed activities and events.
Fig 4. % who missed activities and events (By personality type)
Do people want to meet people from the internet?
We found that both young men and women were equally open to the idea of meeting someone they had met online first at around 89% responding maybe/yes. This was consistent across ages.
Fig 5. The most common reasons students struggled to make friends
The reason for this survey:
Starting this project we kicked off by doing a considerable amount of research into the literature. We wanted to understand everything we could about connection, mental health, the university experience, social isolation, loneliness etc.
While this was incredibly useful and valuable, it was rare to find resources that were NZ-specific, or more qualitative/narrative. So, we decided we needed to just sit down and talk to students. We interviewed 20 or so students, trying to understand what their social experience was like, and where the problems were. Again, this was useful and valuable, but there were still some limitations. To gain a better understanding we’d have to interview way more students, from so many different backgrounds, and we simply didn’t have the time. Also, it was difficult to eliminate our own biases in how we received insight from our interviewees.
The next most obvious step for us was to run a survey. This would allow us to gain an extremely broad (albeit more shallow) insight into the experiences of university students, with facts we could compare. So we did (although it’s important to remember that the survey was conducted during a Covid lockdown, and answers are how respondents perceive themselves).
What remains unknown?
While we did gain a lot of insight, there remains a large number of unknowns (we aren’t exactly data analysts). The limitations of our data collection and analysis mean we are unable to make many strong conclusions, however, we do believe our results offer a good skeleton understanding of the university social experience and serve as a good starting point for further analysis and discussion into where the problems are, and how things can be improved for those who are less satisfied.
Conclusion
If you got this far, thanks for reading. As a call to action, we’d love for you to share this article. Or at the very least, check in on your introverted female friends from Vic, and ask them if they want to hang out. Or something. ❄❤