From the 1934-1935 Edition of
THE AMERICAN SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY

Indoor Play Facilities for College Women

BY GAVIN HADDEN,

ee a what order would you rate the following play

facilities, with respect to their usefulness in
a women’s gymnasium, disregarding the always
present restrictions of cost and space?

Basketball
Swimming Pool
Squash
Running Track
Indoor Tennis
Bowling
Fencing

- Badminton
Volley-ball
Calisthenics and Dancing
Apparatus Exercises
Indoor’ Baseball
Jumping, Vaulting, etc.
Golf Net

“Would you suggest any other play facilities in
preference to any of those listed above?”

In helping to determine recently the most de-
sirable facilities to provide for in the design of
a proposed gymnasium at a women’s college, the
writer sent out to a number of women’s colleges
a questionnaire containing these questions. Other
questions were also asked, bringing many useful
opinions on matters- of design, involving pri-
marily those features in which a women’s gym-
nasium differs from a men’s, but the questions
set forth above elicited the most-generally inter-
esting and useful information of all.

It might be an interesting pastime for the
reader to stop here and mark with numbers from
1 to 14 each of the activities (or facilities for
them) which are included in the above list in
his or her order of preference for a women’s
college, and then turn for comparison to the list
representing the collective opinion as obtained
from the questionnaire, which is printed later in
this article.

The Replies

Answers to the questionnaire were received
from the following institutions: University of
Michigan; Middlebury College; Mt. Holyoke
College; New Jersey College for Women; New
York University ;. Northwestern University; Pem-
broke College; Radcliffe College; University of
Rochester; Smith College; Swarthmore College;
Vassar College; Westhampton College ie
sity of Richmond).

Of these, 12 gave answers, in whole or in part,
to the question on the rating of the various
facilities. The answers were tabulated, each
being given a uniformly weighted score for each
rating, and then these scores were summed up

C.E.

for each item. The system used was to score
in each case 1 for the item rated No. 1; 2 for
the item rated No. 2; etc. Where two or more
items had received the same rating, each was
given the average score of the group; for ex-
ample, if three items were rated No. 1, each of
them was scored 2. The lower the score of any
one of the facilities, therefore, the higher is its
rating by the consensus.

The following tabulation gives the combined
scores of the 14 different facilities, in the order
given them by the 12 votes combined:

 

 

Combined
Rank Facilities Score
Le OWATNOIN OS” UE OO ke esha ore cclarc cosas eoe terete const al ee 25
DI BASKET pA SATA os. Gata cha aeaee al ae aos tae Seep oi 44.5
8. Calisthenics and Eos wid ieikeia neo Noses tenis sas 45.5
4: INGOOLS LENNIS:<355suos~ sess wisi soi ew cla etaeoTee a esea ake 70.5
b> Badminton: 55 .te pe ws se aes Sees eee 75
GANGUARe <5 ieee. Geie < Sices et eG inte 6 seams ate 82.5
Me OE NCE ooo ah ec ages Seas bee a g-c HR EN eeT 86.5
Oe BOW ocd s Seige OS iota soe cis Pe ee aie EE 94
C2 Volleyball 2 Se aS eee eee ea Oe Sees 96.5
LOS: mGoor-. baseball 2.0... ccles sia viele tate acto e a 110.5
ADPCM CU neo casas o oid ora ae ac goin ios ican salto veneccloueneee sors 116
12> Apparatus “Exercises: 03... scssad oon: cae es 117.5
13 cuuUmping Vv aUlLbing, “eles =. 5. ae ee ee ee 136.5
ARNIS APTaGle aise ceek acausieicisals.c gts ce reeeareoersceians 162.5
LOCAL BCONE = aa cscsje oud sash eet Gcteromyecet< 1,263.0

(The total score for each 14 ratings should be 105 and
12 X 105 = 1,260; the additional 3 points in the total
were caused by giving a score of 15 to each of two items
which were definitely ruled out by one answer, instead of
scoring them 13 and 14 ;

There are a number of points which are of
special interest in this tabulation, expressing as
it does the combined views of a number of
experienced administrators of athletics for
women. Before discussing them, however, it is
worth while to point out the surprising unanimity
of the answers, a fact which cannot be made
clear from the tabulation itself.

The average difference for all the answers, be-
tween the ranking given for each item and the
ranking shown by the consensus, was less than
2.2 places; the rankings given in one of the an-
swers were so close to agreement with the con-
sensus that the average difference was only
nine-tenths of one place, with 6 of the 14 rankings
coinciding exactly. Such unanimity would seem
to indicate that the results may be regarded as
unusually reliable for an investigation of this
kind.

Some Individual Ratings

The markedly high place given to Swimming
Pool should be particularly noted; seven of the
twelve answers ranked this item No. 1, either
alone or with one or more other items; the other
five ranked it No. 2. Also, the low rankings given
to Running Track and to Jumping and Vaulting
are worthy of note. These were perhaps to