Other Results:

There were a total of 792 comments provided at the end of the survey. Three hundred sixty-six were from faculty and staff, and 426 were from students. Many of these comments were extensive and an examination of them yields some important findings. First, students appear to distrust "the university" because of their frustration with parking. They often mentioned that they thought the university was not honest in selling more permits than there are spaces available and that because they could not find a space in the lot where they had a permit, they felt they had no other option but to pay again to park in metered spaces or the garage. (Note: Additional research is recommended to better understand why students did not view Fouts' Field as a viable parking alternative.) Other student's comments noted that the e-trans system was not reliable and did not get students to their destination on time or stop where they needed to go.

Second, students expressed concerns about the high price of parking coming at the same time as increases in tuition and fees. Faculty and staff expressed concerns about the increases coming when there were no salary increases. These comments combined with responses described above show that the cost of parking appears to be a significant issue for faculty, staff and students.

Third, 57 (16%) of the 366 comments provided by faculty and staff indicated that they felt parking is not a "privilege" but a "benefit" that they have earned. Others said that the salaries at UNT were too low to justify increasing the cost of parking. Some staff even noted that parking fees have become a large percentage of their salaries and they could not afford to pay more. These types of comments combined with the quantitative results explained above could be contributors to the low morale expressed by faculty and staff through other venues.

Fourth, some students and faculty/staff commented that they were not satisfied with traffic and parking changes in front of the Union.

Fifth, students commented about their perception that faculty/staff lots were not full between 8-5. They questioned why these lots could not be open to students.

Footnote:

The following definition may assist the reader in understanding confidence interval and confidence level.

The margin of error is the plus-or-minus figure as usually reported in newspaper or television opinion poll results. For example, if you use a confidence interval of 4% and 47%percent of your sample picks an answer, you can be "sure" that if you had asked the question of the entire relevant population, between 43% (47-4) and 51% (47+4) would have picked that answer.

The confidence level tells you how sure you can be. It is expressed as a percentage and represents how often the true percentage of the population who would pick an answer lies within the confidence interval. The 95% confidence level means you can be 95% certain; the 99% confidence level means you can be 99% certain. Most researchers use the 95% confidence level.