Questionnaire: INSFA students

Authors: Elise DENIEL and Noémie HUVELIN

The data is the result of a survey which was carried on 100 students of the food-processing speciality of Agrocampus Ouest. The different questions concern their well-being in their current studies, their student life on the campus and the extra-campus, the perception of their professional future and finally a description about themselves.
Through this study, we would like to obtain the answers to the following questions:
Do students feel well-adjusted in their studies? How do they perceive their professional future?
Before beginning, we considered three students' typical profiles (the student 100 % well-being in his studies, the 100 % "party-man" who is implicated in the student life, and one who is indecisive). We chose to put in active factors the questions which could respond directly to these profiles (ex: fulfilment of the students, stress or professional future). In supplementary, we put the other factors.

At first, we realized a MCA (Multiple Correspondence Analysis). We noticed that the first 4 axes express almost 20 % of the total inertia. The inertia is about 5 % for each of the 4 axes. This result was expected because surveyed people had to decide with numerous answers.
Then, we interpreted 4 axes:

  • Axis 1 measures the degree of fulfilment of the students and their satisfaction of the studies
  • Axis 2 measures the perception of the students about their future
  • Axis 3 measures the lack of sleep felt by the students
  • Axis 4 measures the degree of utility of the training courses

After the MCA we realized a HAC (Hierarchical Ascendant Classification) and chose a partition into three clusters. This classification consists in the following clusters:

  • The first cluster represents the students who wish to change orientation, who do not specially wish to work in the food-processing industry. They are not really well-adjusted to their studies
  • The second cluster is characterized by students rather satisfied by their studies and who do not wish to change orientation. They feel simply good but do not sleep enough
  • The last cluster consists in students very well-adjusted to their studies. Moreover the training fulfils their initial expectations

Globally, our typical profiles fit well the results of our study. Indeed, we found two of our students' profiles: students 100 % well-being in their studies (cluster 3) and indecisive students (cluster 1). However, we did not find the festive spirit that we expected but rather the cluster 2 which represents the average profile of the students: most of them are satisfied with the training

Find here the data set and the R script:

The results of the ENMCA() function are the following:

Beware the results of HCPC() and ENMCA() are not quite the same since the data are ventilated and the method of classification is a bit different.