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Challenge Accepted! a Critical Reflection on How to Perform a Health Survey Among University Students-An Example of the Healthy Campus Mainz Project.

ABSTRACT: Background: Universities represent an important setting of everyday life for health promotion. The Healthy Campus Mainz project aims to develop an evidence-based and comprehensive student health management program covering physical, mental, and social health promotion. Hence, an initial health survey was performed in order to identify the students' health concerns and resources. Up until now, it remains unclear which topics to choose in a health survey among university students and which strategies can be recommended to receive an acceptable response rate or representative student sample within a university setting. The present paper contributes to the call for the present research topic "Public Health Promotion in University Students" by describing methods for health assessment. Therefore, the current paper aims to give an empirical example on how to perform a health survey among university students, focusing on (1) choosing topics for the survey and (2) methodological considerations of how to reach the target population. Methods: An online questionnaire including around 270 items was developed covering a comprehensive set of health topics. Participants were recruited via the university email. Mixed channels for survey promotion, such as lecture visits and social media, were used, accompanied by different monetary and non-monetary incentives. Descriptive analyses were performed to describe the sample. Results: A total of 5,006 participants (out of 31,213 registered students) viewed the first page of the questionnaire; of whom, 4,714 continued further. After a manual data cleaning according to the predefined criteria, the final sample was 4,351, demonstrating a response rate of 13.9%. Students from different study disciplines participated. However, some study disciplines showed a low participation rate, hence, making the results not free from some bias. Discussion: This survey is exceptional as it integrates a great variety of health aspects. The incentive strategy demonstrated promising results. Future research should try to improve target-group-specific recruitment strategies for the traditionally underrepresented groups, such as males and specific study disciplines. This would not only include advancing marketing strategies, but also refining the incentive strategy.

SUBMITTER: Reichel JL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8255799 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Microorganisms are distributed on surfaces within homes, workplaces, and schools, with the potential to impact human health and disease. University campuses represent a unique opportunity to explore the distribution of microorganisms within built environments because of high human population densities, throughput, and variable building usage. For example, the main campus of the University of Waterloo spans four square kilometres, hosts over 40,000 individuals daily, and is comprised of a variety of buildings, including lecture halls, gyms, restaurants, residences, and a daycare.Representative left and right entrance door handles from each of the 65 buildings at the University of Waterloo were swabbed at three time points during an academic term in order to determine if microbial community assemblages coincided with building usage and whether these communities are stable temporally. Across all door handles, the dominant phyla were Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes, which comprised 89.0 % of all reads. A total of 713 genera were observed, 16 of which constituted a minimum of 1 % of the 2,458,094 classified and rarefied reads. Archaea were found in low abundance (~0.03 %) but were present on 42.8 % of the door handles on 96 % of buildings across all time points, indicating that they are ubiquitous at very low levels on door handle surfaces. Although inter-handle variability was high, several individual building entrances harbored distinct microbial communities that were consistent over time. The presence of visible environmental debris on a subset of handles was associated with distinct microbial communities (beta diversity), increased richness (alpha diversity), and higher biomass (adenosine 5'-triphosphate; ATP).This study demonstrates highly variable microbial communities associated with frequently contacted door handles on a university campus. Nonetheless, the data also revealed several building-specific and temporally stable bacterial and archaeal community patterns, with a potential impact of accumulated debris, a possible result of low human throughput, on detected microbial communities.

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Challenge Accepted! a Critical Reflection on How to Perform a Health Survey Among University Students-An Example of the Healthy Campus Mainz Project.

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