When looking at individual students, most selected the exact same response for the ideology question on both surveys. Instead, the sample made a small but significant shift toward being more conservative at the second survey. Interestingly, as a whole, the students’ views did not move more toward the left after the first year of college. The questionnaires included an item that asked students to select their political views from the following options: far left, liberal, middle-of-the-road, conservative, or far right.Īt the start of the study, the overall sample tended to lean to the left of the political spectrum. The students completed an initial survey in August, before the start of their first year of college, and a second survey the following spring, after living with their roommate for nearly a year. Room assignments were appointed by the colleges while taking certain student preferences into account (e.g., room type, campus location, smoking preferences). The students all lived on campus and were assigned roommates prior to their first year of college. The researchers collected data from a two-wave study that was conducted among an analytical sample of 1,641 college students from two American universities.
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