Last week I wrote about university campus shootings and how college campuses need to be aware that different people have different communication modality preferences. One point that I made was that younger students in the Net Generation have a preference for text messaging and that campuses are not taking that into consideration when they send out mass e-mailings to alert students about emergencies. An article from the Associated Press presents some interesting but troubling data concerning creating a campus-wide text messaging database. Omnilert, a company that provides an emergency alert system called e2Campus to more than 500 university campuses, reports that the average campus obtains only 39% enrollment. Another company reports even more dismal findings for its 300 campuses – 28%! One campus even offered a drawing for an iPod Nano to increase enrollment in the system and only got 15% of the students to sign up. Even Virginia Tech, the scene of the worst campus shooting, only got 60% of its students to sign on to the system. Interestingly, according to the article, some universities require their students to participate and others require students to either enroll or decline enrollment to make sure that each one is offered that emergency option.
This is clearly a new issue for many campuses and it is at least gratifying to see that progress is being made. I don’t think that the campus needs 100% participation because word-of-mouth should reach additional students. However, I fear that it is going to take several more incidents for colleges and students to realize that emergency communication is critical and the type of communication preference is also vital. As I said in my earlier comments, no single type of communication system will fit everyone so an effort must be made to try to use the tools that we have to reach the most people. It makes sense to me that campuses need to ask “In case of an emergency, how would you like to be contacted?” or “What is the best way to contact you in case of an emergency?” or perhaps, in the interest of the best overall coverage, ask the students to list any and all preferred communication modalities for alerts.
We are in a major transition period in communication where we are seeing more people choosing to communicate via newer technological devices, rather than “older” technology choices like the telephone which has traditionally been used as an emergency contact on campus application forms.
In a recent study, we asked more than 1,300 people from 11- to 60-years-old how they would prefer to communicate with a variety of people including their best friend, a good friend, an acquaintance, boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse, asking for school or work help, a teacher or boss, parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins, doctors, dentists, to make a date, to break a date, and to break up with someone. In every situation except one (relatives such as grandparents, aunts, or uncles) there were statistically significant age differences. The table below shows two examples of these patterns of communication. There is no doubt that preferences differ across the generations. If you combine texting, IMing and E-Mailing into one “electronic communication” category you can see an even clearer pattern. When communicating with a good friend, for example, 11- to 17-year olds (22%), 18- to 25-year olds (26%), and 26- to 39-year olds (22%) prefer more of these tools than those who are older than 39 (15%). These differences become magnified as you move from good friends to acquaintances: 11-17 (45%), 18-25 (60%), 26-39 (54%), and 40 and older (35%). One other interesting difference is preference for an electronic communication modality for breaking a date: 11-17 (25%), 18-25 (29%), 26-39 (15%), and 40 and older (7%).
| | Face-to-face | Telephone | Text Message | IM | | Postal Letter |
| COMMUNICATING WITH BEST FRIEND | ||||||
| 11 – 17 year olds | 71% | 16% | 8% | 5% | 1% | 0% |
| 18-25 | 66% | 18% | 11% | 3% | 1% | 0% |
| 26-39 | 57% | 32% | 6% | 1% | 4% | 0% |
| 40 or older | 60% | 35% | 1% | 1% | 4% | 0% |
| COMMUNICATING WITH A GOOD FRIEND | ||||||
| 11 – 17 year olds | 59% | 20% | 12% | 8% | 1% | 0% |
| 18-25 | 46% | 28% | 20% | 4% | 3% | 0% |
| 26-39 | 41% | 37% | 12% | 1% | 9% | 0% |
| 40 or older | 42% | 43% | 2% | 2% | 11% | 0% |
Although we did not ask about communicating with the campus in an emergency (the study was done before the Virginia Tech shootings), I am sure that the pattern would be the same. It is clear from these data that communication modalities differ by age. We are currently looking further into this issue in an ongoing study. The implications are clear: in a campus emergency you need to provide a range of communication modalities to reach everyone. Just sending an e-mail is not sufficient.
