Methodology

To our readership,

Welcome to The Daily Princetonian’s fourth annual Frosh Survey. Our team has spent months diligently analyzing responses from over 800 freshmen, seeking to tell the story of the Great Class of 2027.

Our survey was conducted over a period of 23 days, from June 24 to July 16, 2023. On six occasions, The Daily Princetonian emailed questions, assembled in a Google Form, to members of the Class of 2027 included in the Residential College Student Facebook as of June 24 — a total of 1,373 people. All told, we received 818 responses, comprising just under 60 percent of the class.

Every question on the survey was optional. On select sensitive questions, respondents could explicitly decline to answer. Although all responses were fully anonymous, the Google Form was limited to individuals with a University- issued email address, and a feature from Google enabled the ‘Prince’ to prevent multiple submissions. To protect respondents’ anonymity and data, only select members of our survey team received access to the raw data, and none made any effort to identify individual respondents. As part of our commitment to comprehensive privacy, we collected and aggregated all raw data on Google accounts unaffiliated with the University.

Upon receiving an abundance of submissions, we embarked on a months-long process of compiling and checking each tabulation. A minimum of two ‘Prince’ editors from the Data team verified every datapoint.

We exercised discretion when presenting the data in question. Our team carefully considered the implications of various cross-tabulations and sought to ensure that the responses of individual students may not be identified. When utilizing percentages, rather than using raw numbers to represent data, our team rounded the value to the nearest tenth of a percent. As every query was optional, many questions garnered sample sizes one to two percent smaller than the overall respondent pool; in our narratives, “respondent” refers to any student who responded to a given question.

Special thanks to 2022 Senior Survey Director Caroline di Vittorio ’22 for her work developing programs to generate charts and web generation.

Despite our best efforts, our survey includes limitations. We did not complete statistical analysis of data points cross-tabulated from two or more questions, nor did we make any attempt to increase or decrease the weight of various demographic groups to more accurately match the overall picture of a larger group. All the same, a check of our respondent pool’s composition against data previously released by the University indicates a fairly representative and large sample.

In sincerity, all which we report is a little out of date; between the survey and now, some respondents have likely had their first drink, experienced changes in their financial situation, and changed their concentration. Then switched it back. Then changed it again. Our survey constitutes a glance at the Class of 2027 as it existed in June and early July, unresponsive to other life interruptions which may have taken place since.

Thank you for taking the time to read, consider, and interrogate our work. The Frosh Survey is meant to serve as a collaborative reflection, initiating dialogue for the greater Princeton community while preserving the stories of this consummately unique class. We also hope that it is, and continues to be, a whole lot of fun.

Credits

Survey Director

Suthi Navaratnam-Tomayko

Web Development

Brett Zeligson

Data Analysis, Chart Design,
and Survey Design

Elaine Huang

Marc Lessler

Suthi Navaratnam-Tomayko

Data Cleaning

Andrew Bosworth

Yacoub Kahkajian

Grace Kim

Suthi Navaratnam-Tomayko

Tony Owens

Grace Zhao

Narratives

Andrew Bosworth

Sam Kagan

Grace Kim

Ryan Konarska

Madeleine LeBeau

Lia Opperman

Charlie Roth

Miriam Waldvogel

Erin Yoo

Grace Zhao

Graphics

Brett Zeligson

Katelyn Ryu

Noreen Hosny