2026 National College Health Assessment
Michigan State University is participating in the 2026 NCHA to understand campus health trends, identify norms, prioritize issues, evaluate current strategies, and plan for future programming.
The State of Spartan Health is a set of data compiled from the American College Health Association (ACHA) National College Health Assessment (NCHA) which is a nationally recognized survey designed to gauge the health and wellbeing behaviors of college students, with a focus on how those factors might impact their academic success. The purpose is to plan efforts to help students thrive, to evaluate health-messaging efforts and interventions, and inform students.
MSU University Health and Wellbeing participates in the NCHA survey through our membership with ACHA. The NCHA was first conducted at MSU in 2000 and has been repeated every two years since. The most recent survey was conducted in 2024.
The survey is managed by the Office for Survey Research (OSR), through the MSU Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR), including sampling, respondents contacts, follow-ups, incentives, data weighting, and analysis.
According to the most recent data available from 2023, more than 500 institutions participated in the NCHA survey. These include colleges, universities, and other post-secondary institutions across the United States.
The data collected from the NCHA survey is meant to help MSU, parents, and students better understand health trends, identify emerging problems, report behavioral norms, identify risk factors to safety and academic performance, prioritize student health care issues, allocate resources for programming, design new programs, and evaluate current strategies.
Yes, the gold standard for methodology is probability samples (what we use) on campus. Timing is also crucial to administering the survey. Data indicates that students’ behaviors differ at various points over the academic year. To control for variations, we keep the timing consistent by administering the survey over the same time period every two years. This is the reason we don’t compare our results to other campuses; while our methodology and timing are consistently done, other universities do not control for methodology and timing.
The questionnaire covers a diverse set of health-related topics including perceived health status, sexual behaviors and beliefs, alcohol-tobacco-drug behavior and beliefs, injury prevention, disease prevention and screening, victimization, exercise and rest, emotional and mental health, incidents of disease or injury, incidents of stressors, food insecurity, resilience, sources and credibility of health information, and background questions
A pre-notification letter is initially sent to students, encouraging them to participate in the survey. A day or so later, those same students are sent an email invitation by ACHA containing a web-link to the survey. Those who don’t respond to the initial invitation are given a reminder 4-6 days later. One or two additional follow-up reminders are sent subsequently to any who still have not responded.
The survey is currently administered as a web survey. MSU uses the ACHA-NCHA IIIb version of the survey.
In 2019, NCHA III survey was launched, which includes more detailed and updated questions on emerging health issues such as mental health diagnoses, sleep disorders, vaping, and sexual violence. NCHA-III is also more inclusive, with expanded options for gender identity, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity, making it more reflective of today’s diverse student populations. Additionally, NCHA-III improves the clarity of its questions to reduce confusion and survey fatigue while providing institutions with more actionable data. While some data from NCHA-II is useful for longitudinal comparisons, NCHA-III offers a better tool for assessing current student health needs. The earlier versions of the survey ACHA-NCHA II was administered from 2010-2022 , while ACHA-NCHA I was administered from 2000-2008 and was converted to a web survey in 2006.
A stratified random sample of 5,000 MSU students are sent a pre-notification email and encouraged to participate. Several days later, the same sample is sent an e-mail invitation from ACHA containing a web-link to the survey.
Yes—at the front end of conducting the survey, we know who was in the sample because they were invited to participate, and we are able to see whether or not they responded. However, once we have the data set, there is no identifier that links responses to any specific individual.
A total of 931 weighted cases were used for the NCHA 2024. The overall response rate was 18.6%. The sample size has varied across years, ranging from 773 to 1,700 respondents.
The response rate for NCHA in 2024 was 18.6%. Similar to the sample size, the response rate varies from year to year. If there is a low response rate, the results won’t necessarily be biased. If those who answer are systematically different than those who don’t answer, then it would be biased. Alternatively, if those who are able to respond and do are similar to others who don’t respond—it won’t be biased at all.
Because some segments of the student body are somewhat over- or under-represented among respondents, the data set has been weighted based on gender, race/ethnicity, and academic class status so that the final weighted sample more nearly matches and is more representative of the proportions of these groups in the MSU student body as a whole.
Healthy skepticism is prudent for any research. This is precisely why every scientific peer-reviewed journal requires that the authors explain the procedure (samples, data, analyzing, etc.) so the research/study can be evaluated and there are methods to use for reliability.
If the methodology of the survey isn’t flawed or is reasonably done, it is possible that even if we have random samples for the survey, there could be a particular sample that is an abnormality. However, the probability of this is low, and hence why confidence intervals exist. We have conducted 14 surveys over a 24 year period and they continue to produce similar results on questions across time, which is reason to believe these surveys are tapping into truth and real facts amongst our student population.
To request access to reports from 2000-2022, please contact uhw.hpeaa@msu.edu.