Students Take Unprecedented Charge in Marist Poll’s Latest Survey

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Marist Poll’s “Gen:Next” survey took an entirely different approach than any poll in its 46-year history: it put Marist students in charge.

Gen:Next is a survey catered towards 18- to 25-year-olds, created by students in that same age range, to uncover national issues and challenges that America’s youth are passionate about. When first planning the project, it made sense to have students involved with the Marist Poll create the questions that would be asked to their peers.

“We thought, there are polls out there that ask questions about young people. But what if we ask young people what they think about, what they want to know from their peers and from other generations?” said MIPO’s Director of Strategy and Innovation Jay DeDapper, who headed the program.

Since being founded in 1978, every survey in the MIPO’s history has had its questions written by its faculty while students worked as telephone interviewers to help collect data and analyze the information collected. This poll was carried out differently. Marist College honors students composed questions they wanted answered by those in the same generation as them. Though the students ran the project, they had the professional MIPO faculty to guide them through the lengthy process.

“Our role was to make sure that they knew how to go about doing what we do professionally. Not to do it for them,” said DeDapper. “And they did it, with some help in terms of understanding the process, but they did the work.”

Gen:Next, originally thought to be a beta experiment to see how a student-run poll would go, exceeded expectations and was launched on Jan. 30. The poll analyzed how Gen Z felt about three main subjects: climate change, marijuana, and healthcare, compared to other generations. 

The results showed that Gen Z is more worried about climate change than any other generation, finding that 85% of Gen Z is concerned on some level with the ongoing state of the environment. 

Regarding marijuana, Gen Z’s viewpoints were more in touch with millennials and boomers, which may come as a surprise. The survey results found that 53% of Gen Z believed marijuana to be addictive and potentially lead to other, harder drugs, while millennials, Gen X and boomers all came in under 50% regarding the same issues. 

As for healthcare, Gen Z placed more responsibility on the government than any other generation. More in-depth results and statistics can be found on the Marist Poll’s website.

DeDapper plans to instill this survey as a mainstay of the Marist Poll going forward. Some topics and questions will remain the same in the future to show trends, while some subjects will change to uncover how Gen Z perceives other issues.

“The idea is that 10 years from now, we're all going to be able to look back and look at 10 years worth of what people in this young group are thinking about certain issues, and we'll see how that changes. And I think that's what's really exciting,” said DeDapper.

DeDapper hopes to repeat a student-run survey in both the fall and spring semesters of each year going forward to build an ever-expanding back catalog of information on younger generations as they transition into adulthood.