Student mental health survey at the University of Bonn
Although being a student means new opportunities and experiences, it also brings wide-ranging demands that can sometimes become a genuine burden. Our aim with this survey is to get a comprehensive idea of our students’ mental health, not just in terms of stress factors (“stressors”) but also with regard to things that provide strength and support. We want to find out what students really think and thus lay some firm foundations for introducing tailored measures at our University. This will allow future services and structures to be improved in a targeted way and aligned with students’ needs.
About mental health during your studies
For many people, their first few days as a student means starting a new chapter in their lives and facing a host of new demands. At the same time as passing examinations, handling time pressure and negotiating the complex organizational side of their studies, students are also expected to make new friends, devise problem-solving strategies all on their own and strike a healthy balance between studying and their private life.
Experiencing mental health issues as a student can have far-reaching consequences, from unhappiness and a slump in performance through to delays in their degree program and even withdrawing from university completely. Mental illness is also more common among students than among people the same age who are in work. At the same time, it has been shown that study conditions have a decisive impact, acting as both a risk and a protecting factor. Learning more about how all these factors hang together is thus important for developing effective preventive and supportive measures and boosting students’ mental health over the long term.
Information on the survey
This section tells you more about who can take part, what happens to your data and how you can enter the prize draw.
The survey runs from November 10 to December 12, 2025.
Keep checking your inbox if you want to take part! Here you will receive invitation e-mails with the link to the survey sent by the Center for Evaluation and Methods (ZEM).
Who can take the survey?
Whether you’re feeling fantastic right now, facing the odd bump in the road or really stressed out, we want to hear your opinion! The survey is open to all students at the University of Bonn. We’re interested in how you’re doing and what’s going well just as much as we are in where the problems lie.
This is because understanding what makes students stronger is equally valuable as knowing what weighs them down. Each and every response we get will help to paint a complete picture and improve the relevant services and study conditions together.
Yet another survey? Why should I take part in it?
You might be thinking “Yet another survey?” But your participation will really make a difference, because only students like you can show us what it feels like to be studying at the University of Bonn right now—what’s going well, where the stumbling blocks are and what’s needed to make student life healthier. Without your views, it will be hard to come up with suitable measures. Your experience will enable us to focus our efforts on achieving something concrete. The survey results will be incorporated directly into our work improving services, structures and support measures. And, incidentally, you’ll also be in with a chance of winning something in our post-survey prize draw. In a nutshell, getting involved will mean actively helping to shape the University of tomorrow.
Post-survey prize draw
Once the survey is over, you will be able to enter a prize draw where you could win:
- One of 100 €10 canteen vouchers
- One of 300 early-bird access passes to University Sports
Background to the survey
Find out more regarding how the survey came about, what we’re aiming to achieve with it and how it’s set out.
Aim of the survey
This survey aims to gauge the current state of students’ mental health at the University of Bonn. The findings will hopefully help to identify potential stress factors and gain a better understanding of students’ needs and use this as a basis for pinpointing action areas and specific measures for improving mental health at our University.
One key priority is to understand students’ views and integrate their needs systematically into future services, communication strategies and internal University processes. The survey will thus feed into efforts to improve health-boosting structures on the basis of sound evidence.
Structure of the survey
- Main part (around 15–20 minutes):
This is a set of standardized questions about mental health, study conditions, and potential stress and protecting factors. - Additional optional section on personality (around 5 minutes):
Once they have completed the main part, respondents will have the option of answering questions about their personality traits. These questions will help to categorize individual characteristics that might influence a person’s perception and use of support services. This section is completely optional, meaning that anyone who wants to skip it will be taken straight to the end of the survey.
How did the survey come about?
The idea behind this latest survey has its roots in a pilot study conducted during the 2021/22 winter semester as part of a master’s thesis on student mental health. Its results were shared with a select group of key people at the University and the student body and led to several initial measures being put in place. With this in mind, a comprehensive full survey now seems a particularly promising idea.
Many different people and teams at the University of Bonn were involved in devising the current student survey, including the Central Study Advisory and Counseling Service, the Equal Opportunity and Diversity Unit, the Center for Evaluation and Methods, University Sports, the General Students’ Committee and a number of highly committed students. Healthy Campus Bonn was responsible for coordinating the overall process.
What happens after the survey?
2025/26 winter semester: once the survey is complete, the data collected will be processed by the Center for Evaluation and Methods and then analyzed by Healthy Campus Bonn. Data will be prepared and presented clearly and comprehensibly to ensure that the results are communicated in a transparent form.
From the 2026 summer semester onward: within the University of Bonn, the anonymized results will be presented to University management, the faculties and the student representative bodies and shared with staff and students via internal information channels. They will also be published on the relevant web page.
From the 2026 summer semester and 2026/27 winter semester onward: there will then begin a participatory process in which the results will be processed further from a quality perspective with students and other key people at the University of Bonn. The aim is to come up with tangible, needs-based measures that will help make lasting improvements to study conditions and mental health at the University.
The data for the survey is separate to that for the prize draw. All the details on how the data is handled is given in the privacy notice for the prize draw following the student mental health survey. All persons who are enrolled students at the University of Bonn at the time of the survey and the validity of the prizes are eligible to participate.
Your contact persons
Hannah Shepherd
Dr. Manuela Preuß