This document summarizes an undergraduate campaign for the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. It discusses conducting a survey of 99 non-communication students to understand perceptions of the major. Key findings include that females were more likely to see communications as an easy major to find employment in after graduation. Qualitative analysis of survey responses identified advantages like useful skills but also disadvantages like difficulty finding jobs. Quantitative analysis using SPSS found a moderate relationship between being a communications major and job prospects after college.

1. BLSC UNDERGRADUATE
CAMPAIGN
Brian Jay De Masi
Caroline Matis
Timothy Michels
COM 60411 - Seminar in Communication Research Methods
Summer II 2016

2. INTRODUCTION
• Purdue is a highly accredited university currently ranked as the top 25th university
(U.S. News and World Report).
• Purdue is home to the prestigious Brian Lamb School of Communication (BLSC).
• The school was named after distinguished alumni, Brian Lamb, who is the co-
founder of CSPAN.
• Although home to more than 700 students, the BLSC is facing lower enrollment and
looking for solutions to attract more students to its accredited program.

3. THE PROBLEM(S)??
• A degree in Communications has been perceived as less favorable by students as
compared to an engineering degree or business degree.
• There is an issue between the high number of graduate students choosing the BLSC
over the number of undergraduate students at Purdue’s campus.
• In an attempt to better understand this problem and the students, an online survey
to gather quantitative and qualitative data was sent to students (Treadwell, 2017 p.
167).

4. SURVEY AND RESULTS
• Treadwell (2017) explains trend surveys are designed to “measure the same items
over time but draw different samples from the population each time” (p. 159)
• The respondents remained anonymous to protect their identity, and they were asked
series of questions for us to gather information
• Questions included demographic questions like age, sex, grade level, and what they
perceived the advantages and disadvantages of being a communications major were
• We then analyzed the quantitative and qualitative data individually

5. SURVEY RESULTS
• Qualitative Analysis
• 1. We used the respondents answers to generate themes from data
• 2. The main question: What were the advantages and disadvantages of
Communications?
• 3. This thematic analysis proved advantages of being a communications major (i.e.
useful skills, workforce opportunity, relationship skills)
• 4. Some disadvantage proposed were difficulty in finding a job, entry level only,
compensation would be low paying

6. SURVEY RESULTS CONT.
• Quantitative Analysis
• 1. “Data-processing software,” IBM SPSS-23 (Treadwell, 2017, p. 171) was used to
evaluate the quantitative data
• 2. 99 survey participants, a majority of females, attending Purdue who are not
Communications majors or minors
• 3. We found gender to be a significant factor in promoting Communications as a
major
• Females were more likely to endorse Communications than males as concerned with
the ease of finding a job after graduation

7. SURVEY RESULTS CONT.
• We further used correlation analyses and chi-square tests to determine relations for
our respondents data
• Correlation tests: proved that a moderate relationship existed between being a
communications major and the ease of finding a job after graduation
• Chi-square tests: proved that there was not a significant difference between males
and females on the question “Who is Brian Lamb?”
• We furthered our analysis by comparing Purdue’s social media to the Marquette
Study (Berg & Stageman, 2013).

8. SOCIAL MEDIA
• Pictures, graphs, Facebook, Twitter information or whatever you guys want to
include here for some variety??

9. GRAPHS AND FIGURES
• Optional slide??

10. CONCLUSION
• However we want to end the presentation