Outdoor Pursuits

By: Jessica Hepperlen, Mason Harrison and Claire Holt

Introduction:
Outdoor Pursuits (OP) is an activity center on the UNC campus located behind
Harrison Hall. It provides students with outdoor rentals such as camping equipment,
campus cruisers (bikes), and winter sport
equipment. It also offers outdoor trips for
students to partake in such as hiking,
camping, snowboarding and skiing and
skydiving. These rentals and trips are
provided to the students at very low cost.
Outdoor Pursuits is a great opportunity for
college students on a budget who enjoy
exploring the beautiful Colorado outdoors.
It has come to our attention that
students are not taking advantage of
Outdoor Pursuits. We undertook a pilot
study in order to find out why students are
not using OP even though it offers many great opportunities. Our goal for this pilot study
is to raise awareness of the center to UNC students. We decided to make the survey for
the students to take to help figure out what the students know about OP and what they
use
it
for.

Methodology:
We began our research on the OP website. We were able to find all of the trips
listed and the gear that is able to be rented. The website also lists the prices of items.
This information helped us brainstorm different questions we wanted to ask. Through
research, we were able to
We wanted to know if students are just using the service to rent out the campus
cruisers or do students use the other equipment, trips and other opportunities Outdoor
Pursuits provides. We decided to use some multiple choice, open-ended, and scale
questions. The first questions we asked were general questions such as “do you know
what Outdoor Pursuits is” and “do you know where Outdoor Pursuits is located.” These
questions helped us determine if people had even heard of OP. Fortunately, 86% know
what OP is so the rest of the survey would not be confusing for many people. The next
question we asked were about if people had rented equipment from OP or if they would
be interested in participating in workshops OP provides.This
gave us a sense of if students knew about the different
resources the activity center provides.
We also added two questions about where students
have seen and would like to see advertisements for OP. While
we were constructing our survey in class, we had not originally
thought about putting questions about advertising for OP but
we realized that this would help us give recommendations to
OP.
We sent out our survey to the student population at the University of Northern
Colorado. This was not a random sample though, because we did not have access to
every student at UNC. Our goal was to help Outdoor Pursuits bring in more business.
We want to raise awareness to students that Outdoor Pursuits is a great way to spend
their weekends.
To administer our survey we posted it to our social media pages, specifically
Facebook. We also followed up with sharing it throughout Greek life as well as other
UNC students.

Findings:
Our results indicated that 86% of students at the University of Northern Colorado have
heard of Outdoor Pursuits. The first two questions on the survey asked the participant if
he or she has heard of the organization and know where it is located on campus. These
questions were to create a foundation and see how well Outdoor Pursuits has been
doing from exposure to activity before our team created this study. According to the
survey, about 86% of people have heard about it and 74% of people know where it is
located on campus.From these two questions alone, this could mean that students
know about the organization from seeing other students ride campus cruisers to class or
the climbing wall in the recreation center. That is only one out of many other resources
Outdoor Pursuits provides.

Outdoor Pursuits provides other equipment for students

to rent out for free. The team wanted to know if any
students were
taking
advantage of
this
opportunity. A
question from
the survey
asks, “What
equipment
have you used from Outdoor Pursuits?” About
58% of the participants, which is the majority,
said none. Out of the participants that have
rented equipment from Outdoor Pursuits, the
campus cruisers and hiking/backpacking equipment were rented the most both equaling
17%. To see if people actually are interested in outdoor activities, we provided a follow
up question and asked what outdoor activity the
participant is interested in.

One of the goals in this survey was to find

out if people even knew of the trips or workshop
classes Outdoor Pursuits provides throughout the
semester. These trips are opportunities for
students to explore and see Colorado outside of
UNC with little to no cost. The workshops are to
teach students about safety and “survival in the
wilderness.” The question our team used to
answer this question was, “Are you aware that
you can participate in
workshops and trips
through Outdoor Pursuits for sometimes as little as $15.00?”
Exactly half of our participants were aware of these
opportunities while the other half did not.
Another critical question provided in the survey was
about the marketing side of Outdoor Pursuits. We asked the
participants where they have seen advertisements for the
organization, and where they would like to see Outdoor
Pursuits communicate with them. About 76% of the students said they have seen them
at the campus recreation center and 56% said they had seen them at the university
center.

Hearing where the students would like to see Outdoor Pursuits communicate with
them was very informative. About 44% of students want the organization to
communicate with them online. After communicating to the audience online, about 21%
would like Outdoor Pursuits to reach out even more at the university center on campus.

The demographic question on the survey asked for the student’s year at UNC.
The results showed that 32% of students were juniors and following the junior class, it
was a tie between seniors and freshman both at a 23%. We felt that asking what gender
someone identified with was unimportant for our survey because both men and women
can enjoy the outdoors.

Discussion:
After thoroughly reviewing all of the results of our survey, we came to the
conclusion that the majority of students know what Outdoor Pursuits is and where it is
located. However, we feel that Outdoor Pursuits can improve in a few different ways.
Although half of the people we surveyed know what the trips are, there is room for
improvement if they advertised online. OP should take advantage of the low prices they
offer and put more effort into advertising.

● Advertise online
● Add more trips such as white water rafting and yoga trips
● Advertise their low prices more

We feel that we could have gotten a better sample if we had access to every
UNC student. A stratified random sample would have been especially helpful because
the data shows that the majority of our respondents were juniors. This could be because
we are juniors. The stratified random sample would help get a wider range of grades.
The only other thing we could have benefitted from is being allowed a few more
questions. For example, we would have liked to ask about the climbing wall and if
students use it. However, the free version of SurveyMonkey only allows for 10
questions. All in all, this survey showed important information about Outdoor Pursuits. If
they advertised further, more students would be informed and their business would
improve immensely.
Appendix:

Do you know what Outdoor Pursuits is?

Answer Choices– Responses–

– 86.49%
Yes 64

– 4.05%
No 3

– 9.46%
No, but I have heard of it 7

Total 74

Do you know where Outdoor Pursuits is located?

Answer Choices– Responses–

– 74.32%
Yes 55

– 25.68%
No 19

Total 74

What equipment have you used from Outdoor Pursuits?

Answer Choices– Responses–

– 17.57%
Rented UNC cruiser bike 13

– 17.57%
Camping equipment 13

– 14.86%
Snow equipment (snowboarding, snowshoes, etc.) 11
– 4.05%
Aquatic equipment (kayak, canoes, paddles, etc.) 3

– 8.11%
Hiking/Backpacking equipment 6

– 6.76%
Other 5

– 58.11%
None 43

Total Respondents: 74

What outdoor activities are you interested in?

Answer Choices– Responses–

– 85.92%
Hiking/Backpacking 61

– 69.01%
Kayaking/Canoeing 49

– 66.20%
Skiing/Snowboarding 47

– 43.66%
Paintball 31

– 45.07%
Rock Climbing 32

– 43.66%
Ropes Course 31

– 7.04%
Responses 5
Other (please specify)

Total Respondents: 71
 Would you be interested in participating in workshops such as
the Wilderness First Responder course Outdoor Pursuits
provides?

Not Somewhat Moderately Very Total– Weighted

– interested– interested– interested– interested– Average–

– 27.40% 38.36% 21.92% 12.33%

Choose one 20 28 16 9 73 2.19

Are you aware that you can participate in workshops and trips
through Outdoor Pursuits for sometimes as little as $15.00?

Answer Choices– Responses–

– 50.00%
Yes 37

– 50.00%
No 37

Total 74

Where have you seen advertisements for Outdoor Pursuits?

Answer Choices– Responses–

– 76.39%
Campus Recreation Center 55

– 43.06%
Residence/Class Halls 31

– 56.94%
University Center 41
– 20.83%
Online 15

– 6.94%
Responses 5
Other (please specify)

Total Respondents: 72

Where would you like to see Outdoor Pursuits communicate with

you?

Answer Choices– Responses–

– 16.44%
Campus Recreation Center 12

– 15.07%
Residence/Class Halls 11

– 20.55%
University Center 15

– 43.84%
Online 32

– 4.11%
Responses 3
Other (please specify)

Total 73

Q9
Export

Are there any other activities that you would like to see Outdoor
Pursuits provide?

What year are you?

Answer Choices– Responses–

– 22.97%
Freshman 17

– 12.16%
Sophomore 9

– 32.43%
Junior 24

– 22.97%
Senior 17

– 9.46%
Fifth year / Other 7

Total 74