LSU Media has conducted a poll of 270 students to find out what matters to them, here are the results…

With the Loughborough Students’ Union Elections set to begin at the start of May, we sent out a survey to all students in order to find out what they care about, as well as what they are involved in. We received 270 responses, which equates to 1.45% of the student population. Our notes on methodology section details some caveats with our data.

In our survey, 92.22% of respondents were undergraduates, 6.3% were Masters students, and 1.48% were Postgraduate Researchers. 53% of respondents were female, 43% were male, and 3% were non-binary (we also had two respondents who preferred not to tell us their gender).

54% of students intend to vote

Of the 270 responses, 146 students told us that they intend to vote in the upcoming elections, 97 told us that they might vote in the elections, and 27 told us that they don’t intend to vote at all. We also found that those involved in Student Activities were much more likely to vote, with 88% of those involved in Department Committees intending to vote.

Those involved in Media, Societies, and Sport were just as likely to vote as the general population of students: 64%, 59%, and 53% respectively. Whereas those involved in Rag, Action, Academic Representation, Enterprise, and Hall Committees were more likely than the average to vote.

We also found that those involved in more than one Student Activity were much more likely to vote than those only involved in one and those involved in none.

Freshers were the most undecided, with 65% either not voting or ‘might’ be voting, although this was not unexpected as they have never experienced an election cycle before.

Students (not surprisingly) care about Nights Out

210 (77%) of our respondents either care a bit or a lot about Nights Out offered by the Students’ Union. This includes 23 who do not intend to vote. Comparatively, 179 (66%) care a bit or a lot about Student Activities, including 11 students who do not intend to vote.

24% of respondents were indifferent towards the Academic Representation that LSU offers, which is the largest of all the things we asked, although it is closely followed by the student jobs available, which 14.1% didn’t have an opinion.

Overall though, more people care about the things that the Students’ Union does than don’t, with an average of 76% of students caring at least a bit about what they do.

Our complete survey data

Below is a survey bubble chart that demonstrates all parts of our survey data for you to explore and compare different facets of the survey.

Notes on Methodology

This survey was open to the general public between 09/04/21 and 16/04/21. There was every possibility that students could fill in the survey more than once, and even members of the public could access the survey so this may have skewed our results.

There is also a caveat that those who responded to this survey are more likely to be engaged with the Students’ Union and LSU Media, which would explain why more people intend to vote than what has been shown over the past two election cycles (roughly 32% in 2019 & 16% in 2020). This also explains why LSU Media is the third largest section of the Students’ Union based on this data, as it was shared with LSU Media Volunteers before being shared with the public.

The survey also relied on students sharing it with their friends in order to gain a certain level of responses, this means that we are likely surveying a limited number of echo chambers as a result of this distribution.

These findings should not be used to justify any real-world decisions and are purely generated in order to provide a point of reference when LSU Media discusses the student population during the Elections in 2021.

On the survey bubble graph, when sizing by number of activities each participant is involved in those that have ‘0.5’ are those who are not involved in any activity – this was done as if you input the data as ‘0’ they disappear from the graph entirely,