Sociology Research Paper 10/29/11 High school dating is an intriguing thing. We had a question. We wanted to know the what, where, and who of dating in the adolescent setting. Our theory was that the younger students would prefer group dates that would involve less oneon one time. We thought they might prefer something like bowling or a movie. Our theory was also that the older students would prefer a oneonone date that would involve more face time, something like going out to dinner. We thought this would happen because younger students tend to be less mature, and not necessarily ready for the commitment or the seriousness that comes with knowing intimate details about your significant other. Like the sort of details you find out in a oneonone date. Younger students also tend to feel more awkward and less experienced in their dating, so they may choose a less intimidating option for spending time with a potential partner. Older students on the other hand, tend to be more mature, knowledgeable, and experienced in the art of dating. This means they may possibly feel more comfortable with a more personally geared date. Older students may also be looking for a more serious relationship, and getting to know them on a more intimate level the first time around may appeal more to them. So, the older the students are, the more intimate of a date they want. The younger the students are, the less intimate of a date they want. We then thought about how we wanted to execute the finding of our information. An ethnomethodology wouldn’t make any sort of sense. Disrupting a norm and seeing how a teenager reacts to that, in order to find out their dating preference isn’t going to be plausible with the information we want to find out. A research paper wouldn’t be relevant to real time or our location. Internet research
Transcript
Sociology Research Paper 10/29/11
High school dating is an intriguing thing. We had a question. We wanted to
know the what, where, and who of dating in the adolescent setting. Our theory was
that the younger students would prefer group dates that would involve less one-‐on-‐
one time. We thought they might prefer something like bowling or a movie. Our
theory was also that the older students would prefer a one-‐on-‐one date that would
involve more face time, something like going out to dinner. We thought this would
happen because younger students tend to be less mature, and not necessarily ready
for the commitment or the seriousness that comes with knowing intimate details
about your significant other. Like the sort of details you find out in a one-‐on-‐one
date. Younger students also tend to feel more awkward and less experienced in their
dating, so they may choose a less intimidating option for spending time with a
potential partner. Older students on the other hand, tend to be more mature,
knowledgeable, and experienced in the art of dating. This means they may possibly
feel more comfortable with a more personally geared date. Older students may also
be looking for a more serious relationship, and getting to know them on a more
intimate level the first time around may appeal more to them. So, the older the
students are, the more intimate of a date they want. The younger the students are,
the less intimate of a date they want.
We then thought about how we wanted to execute the finding of our
information. An ethnomethodology wouldn’t make any sort of sense. Disrupting a
norm and seeing how a teenager reacts to that, in order to find out their dating
preference isn’t going to be plausible with the information we want to find out. A
research paper wouldn’t be relevant to real time or our location. Internet research
Sociology Research Paper 10/29/11
won’t be very accurate, nor plentiful enough for our purposes. Researching in a book
would be even less relevant because it would most likely be much less plentiful in
accurate information, and probably not written based off of real research we’re
looking for. The author probably wasn’t trying to answer the same sort of questions
we are trying to. Pure observation would have taken months, even years to gather
enough information for an accurate analysis. Plus, you can’t exactly stand in school
all day long looking for a teenager about to ask out another teenager. You also can’t
follow people around on their first date. So, we decided to conduct a survey in order
to get first-‐hand, and accurate information straight from the group we want to find
the information about. We wanted real opinions and real preferences on the specific
questions we needed answered. With a our survey, we could be ask people what
their age and grade was in order to test our theory about younger students being
less intimate, and older students preferring more intimate situations on a first date.
We are mostly focused on the difference between the age groups, and our survey
lets us do that. The independent variable of our experiment is the age of the person
answering the survey, young or old. The dependent variable is what kind of date
they prefer. The control variables are that they are all in highschool, and they all go
to the Delta Program.
The process of how we conducted this survey isn’t necessarily complicated.
First off, we made a list of our questions. We wanted to cover the age, the grade, and
the first-‐date preferences of each person being surveyed. Our questions on the
survey were as followed:
1. What is your age?
Sociology Research Paper 10/29/11
2. What grade are you in?
3. Are you male or female?
4. On a first date, would you prefer it to be one-‐on-‐one with your date, or would you
prefer it to be a group date with one or two more couples there?
a. One on one date b. Group date
5. If you do prefer it to be a group date, how many other couples would you prefer to
be there?
a. One more couple b. two more couples c. 3+ more couples
6. What is your age limit with dating, how many years younger will you date, how
many years older will you date?
a. Years younger _____ b. Years older _____ c. No preference
7. Where would you go, or what would you prefer to do on a first date?
a. Out to dinner/out to eat
b. Go to see a movie
c. Go bowling/paintball/rock climbing etc.
d. Hang out at either persons house
e. Other: ____________________________________________________
8. Are you currently dating anybody?
a. Yes b. No c. Other: _______________________________
9. If yes, where did you go for your first date?
We also added an introduction paragraph to let the students know why they
have this survey in front of them, why we are giving them this survey, who is
conducting it, where to put it when they’re done, and to answer the questions
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truthfully and as soon as possible. We put the introduction paragraph before the
questions on our sheet. Our introduction paragraph is as follows:
Dear Delta Student,
For our Advanced Sociology class, we have to create a research project. We
chose to create a survey specifically about the subject of dating. Please answer these
questions truthfully!
If you prefer not answer any number of these questions, you don’t have to. Please
return this to N’s mailbox as soon as possible!
Signed,
The people we asked were every student at the Delta Program grades seven
through twelve. We wanted to keep this just in the high school community, and
that’s why we chose Delta. We also chose Delta just for the sake of convenience.
There is absolutely no way we could get surveys to the high school and expect
people to answer them. Question one and two were asked so that we could get a
basic knowledge of the age or grade of each person answering. Question three was
asked just so we would see if their was any gender relation. Girls may prefer a
certain kind of date, and guys may prefer a certain kind of date. Question four was
asked so that we could measure the intimacy level of the person answering, the
same for question five. A person choosing a group date would have a less intimate
preference, and a person that chose a one-‐on-‐one date would have a more intimate
preference. Question five was asked just to further the intimate/non-‐intimate factor
in our survey. Question six was asked for the reason of seeing if there is any sort of
Sociology Research Paper 10/29/11
comparison of large or small age ranges to how intimate or non-‐intimate a person is.
We also asked this question just for the sake of curiosity. Question seven was asked
to again, further the intimate/non-‐intimate element. Options A and D would be
considered slightly more personal dates, while options B and C are slightly less
intimate dates. We also added the option of adding your own answer for that, to see
if somebody preferred something else. Questions eight and nine were also asked to
see if there is any connection to if they are dating somebody to their other answers.
The surveys reached people of female and male gender (although Delta is a mostly
female group), people of numerous sexual preferences, people that have dated in
varying degrees, and people that have never dated at all. Some people might be in a
relationship (they could be in their first relationship, or possibly their 5th.) or they
might not be in a relationship at all. The surveys reached all the races that go to
Delta (which admittedly is a predominantly Caucasian group of people). We gave
them this survey by printing it out on one sheet of paper with black ink, Century
Gothic font, size 11.5, and put it in each of their mailbox with our own two hands.
We also bolded the number of each question, and the answer of each question (if a
question had multiple answers that they could circle). The reason we used paper
instead of the internet was because we thought more people were more likely to
answer the surveys this way. The questions that didn’t have an answer to circle, we
left them space to write something. Each student at the Delta Program has a mailbox
which is a cubby that they get papers, tests, and others given to them through. All
Delta students check their mailboxes regularly depending on the student. We put
the nine question survey in their mailbox at lunch time (lunch went from 11:35 to
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12:15 on that day, and we put the surveys in around 12:05 to 12:10) right before an
All School Meeting. The All School Meeting is a meeting held once every 6 cycle days
which all students and teachers attend. When the All School Meeting came around,
we had the fact that the students would be getting a couple surveys in their mailbox
(including ours) announced during the announcement section and that they needed
to fill them out as soon as possible and return the surveys to their respective places.
The reason we did this was so that people could remember to do their surveys. We
put the surveys in people’s mailboxes on a Friday, and we gave each student until
Tuesday of the following week to fill them out and hand them back. We gave each
student the same exact survey with the same exact order of questions and number
of questions. We wanted to keep all the answers as controlled as possible, so we saw
no point in mixing up the questions. We gave ourselves two days to collect and
1 more: 2 more: 3+ more: Younger 0 1| 2|| 3 4 Older 0 1 2| 3| 4| 5 No Pref | Eat|| Movie| Sports:| Hang:| Other: Yes:||| No:| Our theory was that the younger students would prefer a less intimate date,
while older students would prefer a more intimate date. Our data doesn’t seem to
have any sort of correlation. The younger students preferred one-‐on-‐one dates as
much as the older students. The preference for what to do on a first date is
completely scattered also. There also seemed to not be dating somebody didn’t have
any sort of unique preference. People that did prefer a group date usually only
preferred for one more couple to be there, and people did tend to prefer one-‐on-‐one
overall, but those are the only patterns that people seemed to prefer. Otherwise,
Sociology Research Paper 10/29/11
everything else is completely random. The preference of people in dating situations
seems to be completely personal.
Many things could have changed with this study. We overlooked a lot. First
off, the amount of people that answered the surveys per age is way off. Only a couple
14 year olds answered, while a bunch of 17 year olds answered. That’s not exactly
reliable information. Another thing is the gender bias. The 18 year olds were almost
all women, and that could have impacted things greatly. Also, we only did it in one
little area. This data won’t be accurate for all teens. Overall, not many people
answered. We only got 60 something surveys back, and that’s probably not an
accurate representation of the Delta students. Another thing was that the paper
surveys were a problem. People tended to skip sections completely on the survey, or
circle more then one answer for a question. We also got some answers from people
that were obviously not serious. If we had done an online survey, where we could
control how many answers a person picked, and how they answered them, we
would have been much better off. Also, some of our questions don’t correlate to our
theory. Some of the questions are actually completely irrelevant, and we shouldn’t
have put them in the survey. Honestly, this study has many flaws. The potential for
further study is that you could expand this study to many teens in many high
schools. A researcher could do something more wide scale to get a more accurate
picture. A researcher could also look at the difference between male and female, and
what gender prefers what. Research is an ongoing thing that will never really be
