Max Nolan Kristen Hooten Do You Pee in the Pool?

Introduction The goal of our study was to investigate the effect of anonymity on high school students’ responses to the question: “Do you pee in the pool?” We chose this topic because, as swimmers, peeing in the pool is a common topic of discussion. Prior to conducting this survey, we believed that there would be a higher proportion of “yes” responses to our question when it was to be answered anonymously.

Data Collection We selected 10 homerooms via simple random sample of all Harrison homerooms. We then used random assignment to determine which 5 homerooms would be asked anonymously and which 5 would be asked with names attached. We then used the random selection function on the calculator to choose 10 students from each of these homerooms to respond to our question. The anonymous participants were called up to the computer and asked to answer yes or no to the question displayed on the screen. They were informed at the time of the survey that we would not know how they chose to respond. We collected answers from the students who were to have their answers associated with their names by verbally asking each one for his/her response and then recording the answers.

Video (feat. Tobi)

Summary Statistics Yes No Total Anonymous 23 27 50 Not Anonymous 6 44 29 71 100 When asked anonymously, 23/50 students (43%) admitted that they pee in the pool. When students were asked to provide their names with their answers, only 6/50 (12%) admitted to peeing in the pool.

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Discussion and Conclusion Based on the results of our survey, we have concluded that because answering yes to our question could be considered embarrassing or undesirable, students were more likely to answer yes if they could answer anonymously. We might have been able to obtain a more accurate representation of the student body if we had had time to conduct a larger scale survey, getting responses from 200 or even 500 students instead of only 100.