Tuesday, April 19, 2016

ESL 5315 Survey Experience

Survey

My experience of gathering the data for the survey included the students present in the Sub during lunchtime. Some of them were in the groups doing gossip and some of them were doing homework alone. In my experience, I had no difficulty at all carrying out the survey. I went to the students and told why I wanted them to fill out the questionnaire for me and how that was going to help in my course. Most of them were willing and few of them said that they were rather busy in their homework. One or two students hesitated in the start but when they saw their friends filling the forms, they ultimately gave in. In addition, a student said that she had already answered the questionnaire two days ago so she would not do that again. I found that students were helpful and friendly and they did not mark the answers just because they had to. They took the survey seriously and all of them even took long to complete the questionnaire as they were thinking deeply about the questions. (Fahad)

Experience when doing the survey

I did this survey in classroom at the end of my TA task. I had to explain to them that this survey had no relation with their performances in the class, because some of them were afraid if they told the truth, that they do play cell phone in the classes, they would lose credit from their final score. After that, most of them were friendly and willing to do me the favor. By the way, most of the students in my class are freshmen, so I think they should in the 18-25 age group. In addition, I asked one of my professor who is older than 50, to help me on this questionnaire; he was glad to do that as well. I am so pleased that it took only a little time to finish all the questionnaires. (Yuan)

Survey

I did the survey on the TTU campus. It was almost dinner time and there were not many students on campus. At first, I went to the Chemical Engineering Department building and gave the survey to some students who were sitting in the hall. They were friendly and willing to fill out the survey. One interesting thing is that when I introduced myself to a student and asked if he was willing to help, he said that he already filled out one earlier that day. In the Chemical Engineering Department building, I didn’t find any girls in the hall. Therefore, I decided to go to the library to finish this task. People were also nice and willing to help in the library hall. Many students were concentrating on their study and I didn’t want to disturb them, so I turned to the Student Union Building (SUB) at last. The only problem was that I found there were much more male students than female ones. Luckily, I got all the questionnaire filled out in the SUB. (Songjing)

My Survey Experience

For the first time at Texas Tech I conducted a survey, and that was on cell phone and intercultural relationships. I did my survey from six American males and six American females who are either studying or working in Texas Tech. As there were some questions which were related to classes and grades, I couldn’t do my survey from any office staff. I tried to choose people from different ages, different majors and who grew up in different environments. I chose one research associate, three graduate students and the rest of them were undergraduates. They willingly participated in the survey. The research associate and the graduate students were from my same department. Some of the undergraduates were my students, some were from my Toastmasters club and the remaining two were random students whom I had never met before. Though in the beginning I was confused about how people would react, I found that everyone in my survey willingly answered all the 32 questions. Two of participant undergraduates were confused about what to say about their major. The research associate was also confused about questions on classes as she is involved only in research. I clarified those questions and they all seemed convinced. Other than that, the survey was really a good experience. (Sheik Tanveer)

Surveys

I had 12 surveys to be done on the topic based on intercultural relationship and cell phones and its impacts. The targets were Americans students or residents of the local community here in Lubbock. I decided to make them easy to do, for survey participants, and entered everything on google forms and created an online survey and a sent a shortened link to my American friends and colleagues. I also went to our university library and handed the surveys to few students in the lobby. Everyone I asked was very polite and accepted my request to share their opinion and time for the survey. I know many American girls who are also my friends, so it was easy to get the female part of the equal distribution of 12 surveys. To get the male part I sent it to over to my married friends and asked them both to do it and went to library for the same. No one said anything unusual apart from the fact that they liked the intercultural questions and thought cellphone questions made it lengthy. Overall it was a pretty interesting experience and I got to get in touch with people I didn’t get to talk to, much, after getting acquainted for the first time. (Snigdha)

Survey

I did take a survey with my department students. My department is a small group; there are about 20 graduate students. With even the small groups I haven't had much time, because I am the only one who is an international student. When I asked them to take the survey, every student was really welcome to visit their office. Some of students I had never talked with, so I brought Korean souvenirs and gave it to them after survey. Those were small dolls made with clay. From this survey they perfectly knew where I was from. At first they were curious why I visited their office by myself. And then they were interested in my survey. I felt that female students were more friendly and had a more active reaction about the survey. And I felt that male students took less time than females. Through this survey I got a good chance to get closer to my department’s students. After getting results I will tell them about it. (Jimin)

Survey

The survey experience was very interesting and new. To be honest, I was wondering about how I would approach people. I decided to go to hand out my survey in Starbucks because I usually go there to study and meet my friends. I went there during the evening after 5:00 PM. I found many students from Texas Tech there. I stayed in Starbucks for more than three hours. I met people who were in a hurry and refused to do the survey, whereas there were people who had the time and were willing to help. I am normally a shy person and approaching people that I do not know was very difficult for me. In addition, the fact that I had to give the survey to six males and six females was somewhat time consuming because I had to wait for either another male or female who is willing to help me with the survey. In general, the people I met were kind and helpful. While filling out the survey, I did have a few people ask me for clarification regarding what is meant by religious purposes and I clarified it for them. I also had people ask me if they could choose more than one option, because all of them applied to them. (Abdullah)

Survey experiences

We, students of ESL 5315, are studying people’s perceptions on two different topics: cell phone usage, and intercultural marriages. We made a questionnaire form to get data from students, faculty, or any professional personnel. Initially, our target was to collect data from six American males and six American females. As a group member, I had to go around the campus and to explain our goal of the study to get the data. I am a member of “Toastmaster Club,” which is a non-profit organization where people can get help to improve their public speaking skill. There are some American male and female members who were happy to do the survey after I told them about our study. Then I managed time to go to the University Recreational Center for the rest of the responders. In both cases, responders were very supportive and cordial to fill out the form. There were two American female students who did not participate in the study because they were so busy. One thing I saw was that responders filled out the first page and gave it to me, because there was no indication to turn it over for the rest of the questions. I had to tell them about the other side of the page. Overall, it was a very nice experience for me to tell a stranger to fill out the questionnaire, after explaining the purpose of our study. (Nazir Hossein)

Social Experience

This is a report about the social experience I had when distributing a survey for my Academic Writing class at Texas Tech University (TTU). As a member of the cellphone group, I decided with another classmate to make an online version for our cellphone surveys. I made one on Monkey Survey website and after writing the whole survey for cellphones and intercultural marriage the website did not provide a link to the survey. It appeared that the website has a limit for the number of the questions that you can send for free. Because the questions were over 10 questions, I have to upgrade my account to be able to get a link. I was annoyed that my time was wasted for nothing, but my classmate found another survey engine and shared the link with me. Our survey was basically a short survey over self-reported cell phone use and intercultural marriage attitudes among TTU students. I got all my surveys in five days, and the number of people was more than I expected. I asked five of my international friends to do it online, and they were polite and helpful. I also asked two classmates from the Applied Linguistics department, who were teachers, to give me a permission to come to their classes and ask their students to take the survey. I was lucky with this step, so I got six international students including myself, eight American males, and eleven American females, a total of twenty-five students. Most of the students had the same comment for question eight, which is a question asking about the purpose of using cellphones in class. They said that they use it as a clock to check time. Some added cultural differences for question twenty-six, which is asking about the difficult aspect for intercultural marriage. All in all, it was easy to get more than an even number of the students and I’m still waiting for 4 other Americans friends to take the survey, too. (Eve)

Survey

I did this survey among my students in chemistry lab, since I forgot to do the survey last week. I was a little bit shy to ask them to do this favor for me, so I didn’t talk a lot about this survey. In addition, those students who took the survey were not very active to this survey. I guess that they had gotten used to taking the survey, so they didn’t show much interest to this survey; or maybe because the survey was performed in class, they didn’t get opportunities to talk with their classmates or with me. (Yu)

Experience on carrying out the survey

It was a great experience for me to conduct the survey on cellphone and inter-cultural marriage. This is the first time in my life to conduct a survey. Since our main target is to study the thinking and visions of American people, I thought it would be easier for me if I would conduct the survey on undergraduate students in my department. I requested several students after a class. The students were very happy to fill out the survey. In a few questions, they were confused and they asked me questions. I suggested they write down their thoughts if they did not agree with the choices and they did so. I was able to conduct the survey on 12 Americans (6 males and 6 females) and 1 international student. Almost everyone answered all the questions of the survey. During the survey, I did not get any negative comments from the people. I think it was a wonderful experience for me. (Hla)

Data collection

In agreement with the sample population that we have chosen for the survey of our writing class, which is 240 domestic Texas Tech students in both genders, each of us needed to collect the responses of 6 males and 6 females to establish our statistical data. Although we had already printed our questionnaire nicely on sheets of paper, we decided to make an online version of these questions, because there were many open-source engines on the internet, such as Survey planet and Survey monkey, that could help us calculate and categorize the answers after they were gathered. In order to get results from a diverse data resource, I came to the Student Union Building, because that is the place where T.T.U. students from different majors and age groups come to study, to take a break between classes or even to have their meals. At first, I wanted to use my tablet to show my targeted subjects the questionnaire, but I changed my mind and gave them the paper version instead. That is because with the question sheets, I could have many people do the survey at the same time, while with the tablet, I could only have people do the survey one by one. During the data collecting process, I found that female students were supportive of the survey while male students were lacking interest in taking time on the questions. However, neither gender showed specific reactions to the survey itself or to any particular question. After one hour and a half, I got more than 12 questionnaire answered, and then I spent one more hour to put all the data in the online version to get the results, which are calculated automatically and categorized nicely in pie charts and briefly written descriptions. (Hoa Vo)

Survey Experience

I tried to gather the data in two ways,: sending email to my American classmates to fill out the survey online, and also asking in person to fill out the paper-based survey. Surprisingly, almost nobody responded online. The probable reason is that asking in person gave me the opportunity to interact through body language in order to persuade them indirectly to fill out the survey. However, there were some people who rejected doing the survey even when asked in person. Most of them gave as an excuse the lack of time when they saw the number of questions. In one case, the guy cursed when I said the survey was about intercultural marriage. Therefore, I decided to go to International Student Fellowship-TTU and ask the American students I know there to do the survey for me. ISF is a place located on Broadway, where both international and American students meet every Friday and socialize while having free food. I could do most of my surveys in this place as people had free time and all were Americans who tended to interact with internationals. There were two people who were surprised with question number 15, and asked me to clarify it for them. 4 people asked me in the middle of the survey, “Then where are intercultural marriage questions?!” and I explained that they will come at the end of the survey. They actually thought that there should be a relationship between cellphone and intercultural marriage in this survey and they were somehow confused. There was one person who was wondering about question 7 as she said, “I don’t know how many hours I spend on the cell phone…” . All in all, Americans in ISF were very friendly and responded to my survey eagerly. (Mahshad)

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Data Commentary


Intercultural marriage

Data Commentary

                  The graph shows the two increasing trends of new marriages and all marriages occurred in the United States from 1980 to 2010. In the chart the years are plotted against to the percentage of marriages. The percentage of marriages are actually those marriages in which the spouses are from different races or ethnicities from each other. It can be seen from the chart that the percentage of new marriages has grown by 125% in 2010 as compared to the numbers in 1980. Likewise, the chart also represents that the number of marriages that happened in 2010 is more than 150% of the all marriages during 1980. (Fahad)

Data commentary

          I use the “Intermarriage Trends among Newlyweds by Race and Ethnicity, 1980 to 2008” to do the analysis. In the graph, it shows the changes of four different races, in which people have an intercultural marriage from 1980 to 2008. Comparing the four races, Asian people have highest rate in the intercultural marriages. The Hispanic people is the second and the whites the lowest. However, the rates rise obviously for black and the white. That means, in my opinion, that white people become more and more open minded, and that the discrimination among black people reduces. For the Asian and the Hispanic, the rates have arc shapes, which decrease first and then go up. These mean that, for the immigrants, because less Asian and Hispanic people lived in America during 1980s, they had to marry local people. With the time going, more immigrants come to United States. That is the reason that the rates decrease. And recently, because of more open minded people, more immigrants get married with people from different cultures.
          I can compare my survey with this graph to see that is there any differences between people from different cultures. (Yuan)

Reference
Pew Research Center analysis of 2018 American Community Survey (ACS) and 1980 U.S. Decennial Census data, based on Integrated Public-Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) samples. From: https://www.publicinsightnetwork.org/2012/07/05does-your-significant-other-look-like-you/


Data Commentary #1

                  This graph shows the intermarriage trends among Newlyweds by race and ethnicity. The data are collected from 1980 to 2008. We can clearly see that the intermarriages among all races and ethnicities have been increased a lot in recent decades. The percentage of interracial marriage for Asian and Hispanic people is much higher than it is for Black and White people. Asians have the highest percentage and Hispanics are in the second place.  The percentage for Blacks is only half what it is for Asians while the White people have the least cross-cultural marriage percentage.
                  We can expect to find that there are more newly married intercultural couples in recent years, and that Whites have lower intercultural marriage percentage, as the trend shows, at TTU. (Songjing)

Reference
Ng, M. (2012, July 5). Does your significant other look like you? Public Insight Network. Retrieved on March 8, 2016, from http://www.publicinsightnetwork.org/2012/07/05/does-your-significant-other-look-like-you/

Data commentary on graph of ‘The rise of Intermarriage’

                  The graph shown describes a trend in the inter-cultural marriage scenario. It talks about the years from 1989 to 2010 and the respective growth in percentages during that period. It provides the trends for new marriages and total marriages that happened during that period of time. It can be seen that the many new couples are favoring an intercultural marriage and the number keeps growing each year. The increase almost seems to be in a linear fashion. The number of inter-cultural marriages in the total marriages remains lower than the newlyweds, of course due to the existing marriages in the same culture and lower number of intercultural marriages before 1980s. Thus we can see that both trends are increasing and almost run parallel to each other. To conclude by 2010 a total on 8.4% marriages in all marriages and 15.1% marriages in the new marriages were inter-cultural marriages. (Snigdha)

Reference –
Wang, W. (2012). Chapter 1: Overview. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/16/chapter-1-overview/
Data Commentary #1
                  The current graph shows intermarriage trends among newly married people by race from the year 1980 to 2008. The graph indicates that the intermarriage is a growing trend. Asians have the most intermarriage tendency. White people have less tendency to intermarriage, but their tendency is increasing with time. Blacks have higher tendency than whites, and their intermarriage rate is even steeper. Hispanics are the second largest in the graph. Both Asians and Hispanics had decreasing intermarriage trend until 1990’s, but after then their intermarriage rates are increasing with time. I believe, Texas Tech students also have the similar intermarriage tendency by race.   (Sheik)

References
Ng, M. (2012, July 5). Does your significant other look like you? Retrieved March 8, 2016, from Public insight network: https://www.publicinsightnetwork.org/2012/07/05/does-your-significant-other-look-like-you/


Data Commentary #1

                  Pew Research Center has published a line graph about intermarriage trends among newlyweds by race and ethnicity in the United States over a period of 28 years. Based on this graph, in 1980, Asians were almost ten times more open minded than Whites in this regard. Over the first ten years, the trend dropped dramatically for Asian and Hispanic groups. Between 1995 and 2000, the number of intermarriages for Asians and Hispanics remained constant. However, Blacks and Whites experienced a moderate growth during this 20 years, while Asians and Hispanics experienced the same just in the last 15 years (Pew Research Center, 2012).
                  All in all, it is concluded that the number of intermarriages have increased among all four groups and we can expect that this trend continues more rapidly in the near future.  (Mahshad)

Reference:
Pew Research Center. (July 5, 2012). Does your significant other look like you?. Pew Research Center American Trends Panel Survey. Retrieved in Mar 8, 2016 from


Cell phones
Data Commentary #1

This figure is excerpted from ‘Americans’ view on mobile etiquette’. These data are collected by the Pew Research Center, from May 30 to June 30, 2014, and the number of participants was 3217. This figure gives us varying views of people about when it is ok or not ok to use their cellphones, and the data is shown in percentage form. In the figure, we can see, people are more ok with using their phones while walking down the street, waiting in line, or on public transportation. However, they are less ok to use their cellphones when they are at a family dinner, during a meeting, or at some public places (e.g. restaurants, churches, movie theaters, etc.). From these, we can assume that, people are more comfortable to use cellphones when they are alone or at some rumbustious places, but when they are with someone else or at some quiet places, they prefer not using phones. (Siyu)

Reference
Rainie, L., and Zickuhr, K., (August 26, 2015). Americans’ Views on Mobile Etiquette: Always on’ mobile connectivity poses new challenges for users about when to be present with those nearby or engaged with others on their screens.


Data Commentary #1

                  A survey of Americans’ views on mobile etiquette had been done by Pew Research Center in 2014. 3217 adults engaged in the survey. According to this investigation, 77% believed that it’s ok to use a cellphone while walking down the street; 75% supported the usage of a cell phone on public transportation, and 74% thought its’ ok to use a cellphone while waiting in line. However, only 38% supported the cellphone’s usage at a restaurant; just 12% believed that it’s ok to use a cellphone at a family dinner. What’s more, only 5% thought that it’s ok to use a cellphone during a meeting or at the movie theater or other places where others are usually quite. At the same time, people showed the least tolerance towards the cellphone’s usage at church or worship service, just 4% thought agreed with that behavior.
                  From this group of numbers, we can see that most adults have great views on mobile usages. Especially to some specific activities, such as meeting, dinner with family or worship, most of them preferred to not to use a cellphone. Because cellphone’s usage can disturb others or ruin the atmosphere of activity. I think that most of the students from TTU hold the same attitudes towards cellphone usage as people did in the survey.  (Yu)

Reference
Lee, R., Kathryn, Z. (2015, August 26). Americans’ Views on Mobile Etiquette. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/americans-views-on-mobile-etiquette/

Data Commentary #1

This graph shows that American’s opinion about when is a good time for using a cell phone. According to this graph, results can be divided two parts. Most people agree to use a cell phone while walking, waiting and taking on the public transportation. However, many people seems don’t like when people involve the social group, for example, having dinner with family, meeting and when they are in a public place. I think these results cannot find out what people actually do. These results just can show that ideal behavior people's think about. Everybody knows cell phone using while driving is not good, but sometimes they do. Therefore, we can expect to find what they are actually doing in their daily life.  (Jimin)

Rainie, L. and Zickuhr, K. (2015, August 26), Americans’ Views on Mobile Etiquette, Pew Research Center. Retrieved on March 8, 2016, http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/americans-views-on-mobile-etiquette


Data commentary on the 3rd data
            It shows the survey findings of the Pew Research Center about adult Americans’ views on mobile etiquette in public places and social gatherings. 3217 adult Americans participated in this survey. People have different views on the appropriateness of cellphone usage in different situations. About 75% adults think it is generally acceptable to use cellphone on public transportation, while waiting in a line and even while walking down the street. On the other hand, only about 5% think it is generally OK to use cellphone at quiet public places, at church and during a meeting. A large number of Americans also think it is inappropriate to use cellphone at a family dinner. Furthermore, 62% adult Americans think it is inappropriate to use cellphone at a restaurant. In essence, this survey result gives a general overview on the appropriateness of cellphone usage by adult Americans. We are also expecting to find a similar result at TTU. (Hla)

Rainie, L., Zickuhr, K. (2015, August 26). Americans’ views on mobile etiquette. Pew Research Center. Retrieved March 08, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/americans-views-on-mobile-etiquette/

Graph Description

The graph describes people’s opinions about the situations where it is okay to use a cell phones. It has been found that the majority of people surveyed feel that it is okay to use a cell phone while walking down the street. On the other hand, the majority of people surveyed felt that that the places that they felt was not appropriate to use a cell phone in is at a church or worship service followed by quiet places such as a movie theater. Moreover, more than half felt that using a cell phone on public transportation and while waiting in line was okay. On the other hand, less than half of the people surveyed mentioned that using a cell phone at a restaurant, family dinner and during a meeting was okay. In addition, when I think about how students at Texas Tech will respond to this survey, I feel that the results will be very similar. However, if we made a comparison between males and females in their use of cell phones, I feel that females will feel that using a cell phone while walking in a street on campus or elsewhere would not be okay because they may feel that using a cell phone while walking makes them more vulnerable. (Abdullah)

Reference
Rainie, L. & Zickuhr, K.(2015, August 26). American’s Views on Mobile Etiquette. Pew research center. Retrieved on March 8,2016 from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/americans-views-on-mobile-etiquette

American’s view on mobile etiquette
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
In the figure 3, authors (Rainie and Zickuhr, 2016) conducted a survey on American adults about how they think about using cell phone in various places and occasions. The graph shows that around three quarter of American adults are ok to use their cell phone in while walking in the street, on public transport, and while waiting in a line. On the other hand, majority of them feel that using cell phones is not welcome in meeting, movie theater, and church. People have mixed opinion in using sell phone in restaurants. However, 88% participants think that it is not a good idea to use cell phone in a family dinner. I believe that students of Texas Tech University would give very similar responses on using cell phones. (Nazir Hossein)

Reference:
Rainie L. and Zickuhr K. (2015, August 26). American’s view on mobile etiquette. Pew Research Center. Retrieved on March 08, 2016, from


Data Commentary

                  Pew Research Center has published a chart which shows how people think of cell phones usage in different social situations. There are many given scenarios of the daily life, from walking on the streets to worshiping at the cathedrals, and people would choose whether using their cell phones in each case is appropriate or not. Interestingly, when there is a need for in person interaction or concentration, for example dinning at restaurants or watching movies at public theaters, a large number of people consider the interference of cell phones in these activities is unacceptable. On the contrary, in other situations which also require their attentiveness such as using public transportations or stepping in line, people have the tendency to turn on their cell phones and feel good about that. In conclusion, this chart provide valuable information for us who want to investigate the psychological aspects of cell phones usage because it can illustrate the common choices of the survey sample and provide the typical pattern for a bigger population. Moreover, we can use the data collected from this chart as reliable evidences to justify our hypotheses on human thinking of cell phones usage. (Hoa)

Reference
Pew Research Center. (August 26, 2015). Americans’ views on Mobile Etiquette. Pew Research Center American Trends Panel Survey. Retrieved on Mar 8, 2016 from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/americans-views-on-mobile-etiquette/

Data Commentary
The provided chart indicates the data of the survey on cellphone use at the time of the last crash or near crash, by sex, age, percentage. The given question was “where you using a cellphone at the time of the last crash or near-crash your where in?”, and the options were talking, reading text/email, or sending text/email.  As reported in the chart,  male and female were equal in the percentage of reading and sending emails, but in talking their percentages were uneven. Regarding ages in this matter, ages 18 to 20 year-old obtained high percentage in sending text/email than in reading or talking while driving. The highest percentage was in between ages 25 to 34 year-old, where they achieved 10% in talking while driving. In ages 35 to 64 year-old, the percentages were disparate in just talking and almost neutral in texting and sending messages or emails. I expect to find similar result at Texas Tech University especially between male and female. (Eve)


Data Commentary_2

This figure is excerpted from ‘What’s with the historical trend juxtapositions?’ It gives us the relationship between mobile phone subscribers and motor vehicle traffic accidents and deaths from 1994 to 2011. In this figure, we can see, from 1994 to 2011, the number of mobile phone subscribers has been exponentially increased from less than 0.5 hundred millions to more than 3.0 hundred millions. However, the number of motor vehicle traffic accidents and deaths have decreased from 1994 to 2011, whose trend is totally opposite to what people have predicted. The curve which represents ‘total deaths’, keeps nearly flat from 1994 to2007, while after 2007 it drops steeply. The two curves which express ‘property-damage-only accidents per million miles’ and ‘deaths per 100 million miles’ keep coinciding with each other, and both of them have decreased gradually. Based on the information we’ve got from this figure, we can predict that the total number of motor vehicle traffic accidents and deaths might be negatively related to the number of mobile phone subscribers.  (Siyu)