Evaluation

Evaluation Survey

Pre-Meditation

1. Have you meditated before? Yes / No
2. If you answered “no”, how come?
3. On a scale from 0-10, how stressed are you right now?

Post-Meditation

1. On a scale from 0-10, how stressed are you now?
2. Do you feel like you can better focus on your schoolwork now? Yes / No
3. Have your perceptions of meditation changed, and why? Yes / No
4. Are you going to consider adopting a meditation practice in the near future? Yes / No
5. Was this program valuable and helpful for you? Yes / No
6. What improvements could be made to this event?

Data & Analysis

SMART Objectives:

1. By April 11th, I will have held three meditation sessions for University students in various locations in Rush Rhees.
   1. On April 9th, I completed all three meditation sessions.
2. At each location, I’d have an attendance of at least 20 students for the length of the event.
   1. At the first event hosted in Q&i, I had a great attendance of 16 individuals.
   2. For the second meditation session in Gleason, it was harder to get people to actually come, even though they might have been interested. In addition, I only had one helper this time whereas for the other two events I had more than two helping me gather individuals to join us. I only had 4 students attend this one, but they were very engaging and interested in the practice.
   3. The last event in ITS went fairly well, as I had a total of 12 people join. Overall, I had 32 people attend my meditation pop-up events and I am happy with that turn out. While writing my objectives, I thought I could get more people to attend but soon realized that getting people to be motivated to take time from their studies is a hard obstacle.
3. After the meditation, 90% of students say they felt more relaxed.
   1. After the meditation, 93.75% of students reported that they felt more relaxed.
4. On the evaluation, 1/3 of students say they are interested in exploring a regular meditation practice in at some point.
   1. On the evaluation, 90.6% of students said they were interested in exploring a regular meditation practice at some point. This was above my expectations, as I thought that less people would be apt to think they could benefit from the practice overall.
5. After the meditation, 90% of students state that they feel that they can focus better on their schoolwork.
   1. After the meditation, 100% of the students stated that they felt that they could focus better on their schoolwork.
6. During the evaluation, over 60% of students report having changed expectations regarding the meditation practice in general.
   1. During the evaluation, 56% said that their expectations of the meditation practice in general had changed. Some responses to this were:
      1. “I liked it - I felt relaxed”
      2. “It wasn’t as dramatic as I envisioned it to be”
      3. “I see it’s easier to do”
      4. “Did actually clear my mind, hasn’t happened before”
      5. “I generally only use meditation if i'm really stressed, but now I can see it can be used anytime even when not stressed”
      6. “I've always thought positively about it, but had forgotten how refreshing it feels”
      7. “I forgot how anxious I can get and meditating helps me be aware of this”
   2. With that, 44% of students stated that their expectations hadn’t been changed. These were ALL due to existing positive beliefs on the meditation as a whole. Some responses to “no” included:
      1. “I’ve done it before”
      2. “I know how beneficial meditation can be”
      3. “I’ve always had positive views of meditation, but just never had the time for it”
      4. “I always liked meditation”
      5. “I was already aware of the benefits of meditation”
      6. “I’ve known I needed it”
   3. In sum, this event changed almost 60% of the minds of the students who attended. However, many of the students already had positive thoughts on the practice overall.

7. Increase the number of students stating this was effective by the first meditation to the last by 15%.

1. From the first to third meditation events, all of the students stated this program was valuable.

Other Findings:

• 76% of the students had meditated before.
  • I found this statistic interesting because I don’t think this is applicable to the entire student body. My goal of this program was to get individuals in the library who are studying and most likely haven’t meditated. I wonder how in future programs we can get more people to join who have not tried the practice yet. However, almost ¼ of the students (listed below) hadn’t tried meditation before, which was great and I’m glad they took time to try it.
• 24% of the students hadn’t meditated before.
  • WHY?
    • “No time”
    • “Just haven’t tried it”
    • “Never found an opportunity to”
    • “Busy”
    • “Don’t know how”

Recommended Next Steps

1. Experiment further to see what the best time and location for recruitment is. One student stated this program would be more effective in the morning when it is quieter and before students have started their studies.

Suggestions for Future Programming

1. Reserve a quieter and larger space.
2. Make the meditation longer closer to 10-15 minutes since 76% of the students had meditated before, and some individuals stated that they would've benefitted from this.
3. Get more student and staff helpers to increase attendance at each meditation event.
4. Increase signage similar to PAWS for Stress Relief, as they flyer in Rush Rhees and around campus to inform students about events.