The Value of Campus Recreation for Historically Marginalized Populations: An Analysis of the NIRSA/NASPA Consortium Dataset

The services provided by Campus Recreation throughout higher education are believed to contribute to the wellbeing of college students (Forester, 2015). While this inherent understanding drives the work of many recreation professionals, the increasing cost of higher education over the past fifteen years has stimulated a cultural of accountability. In 2010, the National Intramural and Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA) partnered with the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) to form a knowledge consortium, from which the Campus Recreation and Wellness Benchmark (CRWB) survey was sponsored. A total of 171 distinct institutions distributed the CRWB survey to students at their respective institutions at least once during the 10 years of the consortium’s existence. In doing so, the field of Collegiate Recreation amassed 219,169 responses and over 22.5 million points of data. This quantitative study analyzed this data for the purpose of understanding how college students who identify with historically marginalized populations engage with Campus Recreation and assess the impact Campus Recreation had on their recruitment, retention, academic success, connection to the campus community and quality of life. Through the use of descriptive statistics, the study found that students who identify with marginalized genders and marginalized sexual orientations participated with Campus Recreation less, while students who identify with marginalized racial groups participated more, and students who identifying with marginalized family educational levels participated at an equal rate when compared with students who identified with historically privileged demographics. Through binary logistic regression modeling, the study found that students who identify as Women were less likely to indicate Campus Recreation positively impacted their recruitment, retention, academic success, connection to campus, and quality of life when compared with students who identified as Men. Students who identified as African American/Black, Hispanic/Latino/a, and Asian/Pacific Islander were more likely to indicate Campus Recreation positively impacted their recruitment, retention, academic success, connection to campus, and quality of life when compared with students who identified as White. A deeper analysis found that likelihood of impact increased for all historically marginalized groups as the rate of participation– either Depth or Breadth of participation – by those students increased.