Our project was on abortion. Here are the questions that we asked..For all questions, A=YES, B=NO, C=I DON'T KNOW
1.) Do you support abortion under any circumstances?
2.) If the mother's health is in danger, do you believe that abortion is appropriate?
3.) Should tax dollars be used to pay for abortions?
4.) Should private insurance companies pay for abortions?
5.)Is it legal to use tax dollars to pay for abortions?
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First we are going to discuss our OVERALL results,
Here are our observations based on the overall results:
-The majority of the people that we polled support abortion under any circumstances
-If the mother's health is in danger, there is an overwhelming majority of support of abortion
- The majority of people polled oppose tax dollars being used to pay for abortions
-The majority of people do not know whether or not they would like private health insurance companies to pay for abortions
-A large majority do not know whether or not it is legal for tax dollars to pay for abortion
MALE VS. FEMALE
-Males were in favor of abortion more than females. This is evidence of a gender gap. This could possibly be due to the fact that men do not actually have to consider getting abortions, since they do not get pregnant. They can not fully relate to the subject.
-Males and females both had the same number of "yes" votes regarding women's health being endangered.
-Males were in favor of using tax dollars to pay for abortions more so than females. This is logical considering that they are overall more in favor of abortions than females.
-Similar to the previous question, males were more in favor of having private insurance companies pay for abortions.Women mostly chose "I don't know".
-Both genders did not know the answer to the legality question. This shows a general lack of knowledge on the issue that is not effected by gender
HONORS VS. GEN.ED.
-There was a larger amount of honors students who supported abortion compared to non-honors students.
-There is still an overwhelming majority of people who support abortion in the case where the woman's health is in danger
-Neither groups support the use of tax dollars to pay for abortions
-There is a majority of honors students who support private health insurance companies paying for abortions, but general education students mostly do not have an opinion on the matter
-Many more general education students do not know the answer to the legality question than honors students. Honors students may be more informed on this issue than general education students.
EMPLOYED VS. UNEMPLOYED
-The unemployed and employed demographic showed the general results of the poll. There is not really any correlation between people's views and the fact that they are unemployed or not.
FRESHMAN, SOPHOMORE,JUNIOR, SENIOR DIFFERENCES
-Seniors had the highest level of approval for abortions. Upperclassmen most likely respond in this way because of the fact that they are older and more likely to have to possibly make that decision.
-All of the questions follow the same general trend found in the data. Freshman have a minimal amount of discrepancies between their responses. This may be because their opinions have not been as thoroughly defined as older respondents.
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RANDOMNESS?
In an attempt to achieve randomness, we had to go outside of our comfort level and poll people who we do not know. This included random sampling at school, before school, after school, and at lunch. We also made an effort to make sure to ask people from all different grade levels, and not to focus on asking people in our age group. Also, it was crucial to ensure that we asked students who are not in our own classes, being AP/honors classes, to add to the general education demographic.
POLLING PROBLEMS?
There are many errors that may have occurred while performing this project. For instance, we utilized facebook to poll people. The problem with this is that all of the people who we would ask on facebook are people who we know, and are most likely in our demographic.Also, we may have unknowingly asked the same person who responded to both polls. Due to this, our randomness, and numbers, may have been affected. Another problem that we encountered was that we did not make enough of an effort to equalize the numbers of the different demographics, such as male to female, age, honors to gen ed, unemployed to employed. Our numbers were therefore slightly skewed, and the results were possibly altered.
I am so completely shocked by these results. Our school seems to be SO RIDICULOUSLY PRO-LIFE! Basically Every year since freshman year, there are Many students who participate in those "Day of Silence" days, wearing tape over their mouths to represent the babies who are "silenced by abortion." There always seems to be great participation in those thing (not to mention they're all over facebook). Not to mention Anthem is Such a Christian community! There's seriously a church around every corner. There's 2 down my street alone! I would have thought that a Grand majority of people you interviewed would have voted the opposite way. No joke.
ReplyDeleteOverall it seems like everyone you polled supports abortion, at least in the circumstances you presented, but agrees that it should Not be funded through tax dollars. Though question 4 seemed to fluctuate, it seemed like everyone was pretty confused about questin 5. The way it was worded, it sounded like you were asking more if they KNEW for sure if it actually Was legal or not, not their opinion on whether they Believe it should be. If you're intention Was to find out whether they knew if it was legal or not, then that's one thing. But i think people might have been confused on what you were asking and it might have skewed the data.
Other than that, I think you guys did a great job!
Just the Dream Act polls, the categories the students were placed in hardly had on impact on your results. The majority of your results displayed that people are all for abortion. This amazes me because just like Sam said our school has ALWAYS seemed like it was pro-life. I guess after last year no one really cares. Even the male and females opinion was so similar! It doesn't amaze me though when people mostly said no when money was involved with tax dollars. America "tries" to be as careful as possible with thier tax dollars.
ReplyDeleteWhat i really like about your polling questions is that to every question its either yes no or i dont care. Thats makes it to much more easy to read and understand!!!
ReplyDeleteWell, im not really surprised that many women said they were against abortion on the first question. I figured that women would care more than men and in my opinion the reason why most of the men said yes for question one is just because they think its more of the womans choice. To me most of the school is not exactly "anti-life", but rather that everyone beleieves that there is SOME situations where abortion is ok and/or that they believe that it is a personal decision not of the government. Could this be a symbol that people are now tending to be less socially liberal? and that abortion should not be regulated by the government?
Anyway, if you look at how the first question is worded it says,"...under ANY circumstances." Im sure if that was worded slightly differfent you wouldve gotten different results. oh and im not really surprised that no one knew the answer to the last question. seems like people are not as interested in in the technicalities of the abortion issue.
Excellente !!!
Along with Sam...i was pretty surprised as well. especially since anthem is a very christian community, i was expecting the results to be a little more divisive between pro choice and pro life.
ReplyDeleteIn general, with question 5, a majority of the students, despite whatever demographic they fit in to, did not know whether it's legal for tax dollars to be used to pay for abortion. This shows that most students are uneducated when it comes to the political matters regarding abortion.
The gender gap was pretty interesting. I think it all relates to how males and females each perceive abortions...females are probably going to be more sympathetic towards pro life because they would be the ones actually going through the abortion. Males...the ones who knocked them up, probably support abortions more than females because they don't want to be tied down (is anybody else thinking of 16 and pregnant?). It also looked like females were more against using tax dollars for abortion than males were, i can't really think of an explanation for that.
First of all, I seriously appreciate the style of your blog- breaking down each cleavage point by point is awesome. Thank you :-)
ReplyDeleteI expected these results for the exact reasons that Sam and Carissa did not expect them. Anthem is an incredibly religious commmunity, and religions are usually pro-life. Also, as Sam mentioned, the support for pro-life protests, etc is strong on our campus; indeed, teachers openly support one side or the other because the issue is so polarizing and people feel so strongly about it.
The gender gap was very predictable for me on this, for the exact reasons that you listed. I think you explained it very well, especially with the point that men do not relate to the issue as well because they cannot, in fact, get pregnant. However, I find it quite comforting that both men and women took women's health into consideration.
Carissa, a possible explanation to your last question might be that women are more sensitive to the fact that money would be provided to exterminate something that could potentially be living inside of them, and men are less against this because (again) they cannot relate as easily to the condition of being pregnant.
The way you made your blog made it so much easier to read and understand. First off I loved the fact that all the answers were either Y N or IDK, then you went and broke down each component, explaining the cleavages, great job.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't surprise me that guys were more likely to support it, they don't have to be in that situation. Overall it seems like the results are what I would expect, most of the results fit the type of person polled. The one thing that did surprise me is that Honors students were more likely to support funding of abortion through taxes. I don't really see much room for error in your poll.
Just a little side note, but it would have been interesting to see how religion affected peoples' answers.
I completely agree with Sam. The percentage of people who seems radically Pro-Life were more than expected to being with so I just assumed that the majority of our school, though no participating in "day of silence" type stuff was in a consensus on this. That, along with the fact that we live in a community where the majority of people of conservative, made me think that more people opposed it.
ReplyDeleteWhat was a real suprise was that honors kids seemed to lean more to the Pro-Choice arguement than general education kids. This is a suprise considering how focused, planned out, cautious, and level headed honors kids are in comparison to gen ed (generally speaking). It would just make more sense to me that since the majority of the partiers at our school, who are more inclined to participate in sexual activities (under the influence, etc.) would be more likely to have an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.
(Sorry for the stereotype. I feel harsh. Don't be offended lol. Just a predisposition.)
I agree with Mahoney about the information being easier to understand and interpret based on the options available.
ReplyDeleteI also like the questions asked, I am glad that the answers ended up being what I would choose, more or less. Especially with numbers 2 and 3, those questions can be dangerous. I do not know who would not choose yes for number 2 and no for number 3.
I loved the simplicity of your answer system! It must have been so much easier to get results and calculate the totals etc. I was surprised that you found anyone who would vote yes on number three.... I was expecting the close tie on question 4- that is a hard question for high school students to answer, especially since we don't have to pay for most of our stuff and there is no class that teaches us about insurance (wouldn't that be helpful, to prepare you for all the forms and fine print).The graphs were excellent; they clearly illustrated the cleavages you analyzed, and in a reader-friendly manner. I noticed that none of your questions involved if women should even have the choice to have an abortion.... you might have gotten some interesting responses on that one. Also, great job on the project and the website (I love the purple text).
ReplyDeleteI liked this poll, partially because the post was short, sweet, and to the point. What interested me most was that the students at our school tend to have pretty set views towards whether abortion is a good thing or a bad thing (as indicated by questions 1 and 2) yet they don't seem to have a very strong opinion on how abortion should be paid for, unless of course they are paid for through use of higher taxes (as indicated by questions 3, 4 and 5). I also found it interesting that the differences between the grade levels are pretty scattered, I thought that the results of grade levels would be more or less all equal.
ReplyDeleteI actually liked this poll quite a bit, you didn't make it overly complex by asking weird, somewhat confusing questions, and it's to the point, with very little filler content. I especially like the topic, as abortion is one that has results that diverse itself throughout each individual students, a topic that yields a variety of different results.
ReplyDeleteYour poll results totally shocked me because your poll suggests that the students at Boulder Creek are 'okay' with abortion, when Arizona is a 'pro-life' state (I agree with Sam, I thought our school was pro-life). I also found that question five is a ridiculous question to ask students, especially when many Honors students did not know what you guys were talking about. I am sure that if you asked AP Gov students randomly, they would not know what it is. I did not know the answer to question five until I researched it. If you are wondering, I did notice your note on how a large majority of students did not know if the Arizona government pays for abortions or not. But the other than that one question, your other questions are good. You guys did an awesome job on your blog by making every question a 'yes,' a 'no,' or 'I don't know;' this made your results much easier (and a lot less time) to comprehend.
ReplyDeleteNice poll, guys! The results are actually really interesting- I agree with Sam, I would have thought there would have been far more Pro-Lifers than the Pro-Choice or at least moderate answers you got. That so many are willing to support abortion (at least in some situations) is intriguing. Your questions were well written, and your "Yes" "No "I Don't Know" answers kept things simple. People seemed to be confused by the later questions, but that seems to be something of a reoccuring theme in these polls- any questions that make people think for a while tend to have a lot of dissention or "I don't know" answers.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, great poll! Very enlightening.
I found it surprising that such a wide margin of support was given to abortion. One would think that since abortion is such a contentious topic at the moment, there would be a much more even split between yes and no responses. However, the fact that seniors were more likely to vote yes is not surprising to me. Women being less likely to vote yes to question one is interesting as well. Your explanations, analysis, and questions were clear and very well thought out.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I like that the options for your questions are so simple to answer! yes, no or idk? That makes it so much easier for people to answer too because they don't really have to think about it is much. I was surprised with your results for quesiton 1 in that more people are for abortion. I thought that in Anthem more students were Pro-Life. As Sam mentioned above, there are a ridiculous number of churches in Anthem. I thought that this would have resulted in more people being against abortion, but your results definitely show otherwise. Nice job on the blog!
ReplyDelete