Students compile weight room survey
The single weight room in the Health Physical Education and Recreation Building has inspired five graduate students to complete a survey on the quality of exercise facilities Utah State University offers to its students.
“The HPER department kind of gets the raw end of the deal,” Deborah Svay, a graduate student in health education, said.
And in response, her class is developing a survey to ask students what they think about the weight room and the exercise equipment it contains.
Carl White, a professor of psychology who teaches the class, said each student submitted their own survey questions and will collaborate them into a master questionnaire for the campus.
White said about 300 students will be surveyed. It will be conducted by class members going to the weight room at various hours and asking questions to students who both exercise there often and seldom, he said.
Questions from the survey will include how often a student exercises per week, how often a student uses the weight room, what the student’s purpose is at the weight room and students are asked to rate the quality of the weight room on a scale of one to five. One would represent very poor and five would represent excellent, according to the survey.
Art Jones, the health, physical education and recreation department head, said, “The biggest complaint we get is from our weight room.”
USU has one weight room in the HPER Building on campus for approximately 18,000 students. Students are left looking for alternative ways to work out and spending money on health clubs nearby when USU should already offer an appropriate exercise facility to meet the needs of such a large school, he said.
Jones said many other universities half the size of USU have larger exercise facilities.
“The students can’t even work out on a tread-mill,” Jones said.
Svay said, “Along with asking students for their opinion, we would like to bring the survey to President Kermit L. Hall or the dean of education.”
The five-person class is ready to make a difference and better the HPER, she said.
“Its all for the love of our students – the Aggies,” Svay said.