Health Data on Students

Health Issues Impacting the Academic Performance of Cal Poly Pomona Students

Student Health Services is actively engaged in addressing the health concerns of Cal Poly Pomona students through clinical services, disease prevention and health promotion programming. Underlying these service activities is the collection of information on the health problems, behaviors, and perceptions of students. Two previous surveys shed light on key health concerns impacting our students' success.

The first survey, the National College Health Assessment (NCHA), was developed by the American College Health Association as part of a national effort to assess factors impacting academic performance, retention, and campus life. The NCHA was administered in the spring of 2000 to 16,024 college students across the nation including a randomly selected, representative sample of 939 Cal Poly Pomona students. The NCHA was administered again in December 2004 to a randomly selected group of 871 students (see results below in PDF format).

Some of the significant findings of the NCHA are:

• Mental health issues such as stress, sleep difficulties, relationship difficulties, and depression have the most significant impact on academic performance.
• Cold, flu, and sore throat, frequent reasons for visits to the Student Health Services, are the second most common causes of poor academic performance among all college students.
• The use of alcohol causes a negative impact on academic performance, even though alcohol use by Cal Poly Pomona students is lower than the national sample.
• Sexually active Cal Poly Pomona are almost twice as likely as the national sample to not use contraceptive methods.
• Cal Poly Pomona students experienced some symptoms of depression, including serious consideration of attempting suicide more than the national sample.
• Cal Poly Pomona students tend to have more credit card debt than the national sample.
• Incidents of violence are lower for Cal Poly Pomona students than the national sample.

The second survey, the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey, was administered the following year during Spring quarter 2001 (as well as in 1994 and 1996). 27,675 college students nationwide, including 861 Cal Poly Pomona students, completed a paper or online alcohol and drug survey. The Core Institute, Student Health Programs, Southern Illinois University administered the survey.

The survey was developed to measure alcohol and other drug use; attitudes and perceptions of other students' use; opinions about alcohol and other drugs; and harassment and violence issues.

Reports are available in PDF formats below.

Contact Ty Ramsower x2753 for more information regarding the survey results.