Building Of People Of Button example essay topic

Why do people press the handicap button? It seems like a question not often asked. Our teacher Dr dushay seemed to be boggle by this concept. Our class chose to do a scientific study on this odd question. We needed to come up with a way of answering this question without bias or anything of that sort getting in the way of true results. We all came up with some theoretical reasons why most people use the handicap button.

They were as follows: Students are lazy, Its faster than doing it by hand, Its more convenient than doing it by hand, Because their hands are full, students are fascinated by gadgets, the door is simply too heavy, We don't want to hold the door for other people, It's a habit, and we " re afraid of catching germs. These were the just of the most applicable reasons that were thought up by our class. From these guesses we generally needed to find out which was true of the majority of button users. Along with what peoples views are on the usage of the button. In class we decided that we would make up a survey of questions that would somehow clarify the answer to our big question. We also would observe the buildings that have handicap buttons.

Doing both a survey and observations helps us see weather or not our findings were tainted in any way. All in all I personally believed that the reason why people use the button is that they are lazy, majority of the class believed so too. People are taught and learn from an early age to take the easy way out, and to save their energy; which is just an excuse to be lazy. This question can be an interesting thing to do a study on because we know just about what our findings should be. So many circumstances may alter our results. Like people lying to save face and such.

How many people will contradict their selves? The survey To start the making of the survey we all came up with two questions. Then we compiled them. We sorted through the questions and picked the best of them. Dr dushay made several copies of the survey when it was finished. We all individually took 7 surveys and had them randomly filled out by campus students.

When I had gotten my surveys filled I chose to ask people who weren't in a hurry. I probably would have had different kinds of answers for my survey if I was able to get people who were in a hurry. Observations To do our observations the class was broken up into 14 teams of 2. Each team had to pick from a hat two pieces of paper with destinations of where they would be doing their observations. We all had two destinations either observing the doors from the outside or the inside of the particular building we were designated to. After we had to choose from a list of time frames from which we were to do our observations in.

Each time frame was 20 minutes long. Each team had to hand in two note cards with our observations on it for each building observed. We had to observe how many people either going in or out of the building and how many of those people used the button. We also had to observe the weather conditions too. My partner and I had to observe Seneca and the green house from the outside. The day we did our observations it was cloudy, windy, and chilly outside.

We found out that the green house didn't have a handicap button so that building wasn't applicable to our study. Seneca definitely did have a button though. During our observation of the building 3 people entered and 21 left the building. The button was never pressed during this time.

After everyone finished their observations we all compiled the data and gave it to dr dushay for him to write up a conclusion. Our conclusion For our survey we had received 153 respondents. From our survey we obtained peoples opinions about using the door button and how often they used the button at each building. We had equal male and female respondents and a few people who didn't disclose their gender. Most respondents were Caucasian, some we black, a small percent we Latino, and finally a's midge of people didn't identify their ethnicity. Ages of our respondents ranged from 18-36.

Most were about my age, 20. On the survey was a grade point scale on weather they agree / disagree with the comment or neither. The scale was from 1 to 4.3 being neither and above 3 agreeing with the comment and below 3 disagreeing. The average score was 3.12 which was slightly in agreement.

So most people are in favor of using the button. most people also in turn do also admit to using them. On the survey we asked about door button usage at gal breath, Crawford, stuacc, the library, and the green house, Seneca, Charlton, and Hamilton. All scores for each building were pretty close to each other so the data was useful. Crawford 2.8 Seneca 2.4 Galbraith 2.2 Stuacc 2.1 Library 2.1 Charlton 2.0 Greenhouse 1.9 Hamilton 1.7 1 = never, 2 = less than half the time, 3 = about half the time, 4 = More than half the time, 5 = All the time. The fact that the scores were close showed us that it's unlikely that the data was tainted by sampling error alone. The data showed that students pressed the button most at Crawford.

Seneca's button was pressed just a little less than Crawford. The greenhouse and Hamilton's buttons were used the least. The rest of the buildings were just about in the middle of the usage scores. All in all the students reported using the buttons on an average of less than half the time. On average people who said the button should be used because it's convenient were the same people who scored higher on the usage scale.

So the opinion part of survey and usage part correlated well with each other. As for our observations Crawford was the building that got the most button usage and Seneca was the second in button usage but surprisingly the library button was never used but 135 people said they use it. 132 people said they use the Hamilton button but only 1 person was observed using it. And last but not least 76 people said they use the greenhouse button and there isn't one. I believe this discrepancy had happened because most people taking surveys such as this one aren't that interested in it and are just doing it as a gesture of kindness.

They don't really think though their answers. If they can't recollect something they " ll just assume an answer by doing a comparison with an act they do remember themselves doing. The actual results we came up with are as follows: Building # of people # of button presses Percent Comments crawford (leaving) 97 7 7.2% No data for people entering the building Seneca (leaving) 163 5 3.1% Seneca (entering) 178 1 0.6% Galbraith (leaving) 42 3 7.1% Galbraith (entering) 7 0 0% No button to press Stuac (leaving) 103 3 2.9% Stuac (entering) 29 0 0% Library (leaving) 43 0 0% Doors propped open at least half the time. Library (entering) 65 0 0% Doors propped open? greenhouse No observations there is no button Hamilton (leaving) 40 1 2.5% Button broken Hamilton (entering) 39 0 0% Button broken To really find out why people use the button I believe we have to find people in a more relaxed environment to have them take a survey. I believe some people were just in a hurry. Our first attempt at making a survey was not so good; I believe maybe it was too long.

We could maybe even try doing an on line survey where people can fill it out at their own discretion. Well with the data we did accomplish I think I can say that people in general do use the button because they think its convenient, its used most often at Crawford, and also used more when people are leaving buildings. I believe people are using it more when they leave the building because they are exhausted from their previous class. I know I can be when I'm done with a class sometimes. Could button pressing be increased or decreased? Maybe if some buttons were moved in some more convenient places the button would get pressed more often, but do we really want to encourage more laziness in our generation.

Each new generation we are having more and more overweight children and young adults. Now decreasing button use is something more productive to work towards. We could put an out of order sign on the buttons and only tell the handicap people on campus that they really do work. That would be something.

I could see some lazy people right now throwing a fit about it..