‘Tis the Season, Right? James Spencer & KC Elsmore

What’s the Purpose? We wanted to discover when people thought Christmas music should be broadcast by radio stations, or when Christmas music should be listened to in general. Question: If, by putting a question before the survey that leaned toward a certain answer, we could get people to say they thought Christmas music should be broadcast earlier rather than later.

Sampling Procedure Population: All students at Juab High School Selecting our sample : Stratified Random Sample – We got a list of all the boys and a list of all the girls that attend JHS. We assigned each person on both lists a number from 1 to however many there were (around 350 each). Then, for each list, we used the random number generator on the calculator to select 40 individuals to take the survey, so we ended up with 40 boys and 40 girls. The first twenty random numbers selected for each gender were given the unbiased, and the last twenty the biased. Making our survey bias: We wanted people to say that Christmas music should be played earlier (before Thanksgiving), so we put a question at the top of the survey that we thought would positively change the way they answered the question below.

Survey Artifact Biased Survey Does it make you ill when people are so selfish that they refuse to celebrate Christ’s birth other than solely in the month of December? Yes/No When do you think Christmas music should be played? O / Any time through year O / After Halloween O / After thanksgiving O / Week before Christmas O / Day of Christmas O / Not at all Gender? O Unbiased Survey When do you think radio stations should start playing Christmas music? O / Any time through year O / After Halloween O / After thanksgiving O / Week before Christmas O / Day of Christmas O / Not at all Gender? O

Survey Challenges One of the hardest things we discovered as we tried to have people complete our survey was getting a hold of them and making contact. Sometimes the students were not in their classes, they were on vacation, or missing for some other reason. However, in the end we only ended up with two surveys incomplete. We had a 2.5% non-response rate which was really quite amazing. Improvements: If we could do this again we would probably select our sample through clusters rather than just random people. That way it would be easier to contact everyone because we would only have to go to a few classes. We didn’t really have a non-response or undercoverage bias. We contacted 78 of the 80 people and they were all very different types of students. Likewise there was not really any bias that we didn’t anticipate.

When should we listen?

Biased Results

~Analyzing Results~ The females when given the biased version of the survey responded much more positively towards Christmas music earlier in the year with 35% answering before Thanksgiving where only 5% had answered that way on the unbiased one. In the case of the males, the difference was not very significant. There was actually one less person (about 5%) who answered before Thanksgiving on the biased version, but there was also one less person who answered after the week of Christmas. So there were more people in the middle (after Thanksiving) on the biased version. It pulled the data from both extremes to the center. In comparing the two genders, 10% more of the females said for Christmas music to be played earlier than the males did. We thought that this would happen, seeing as in our society usually females get more in to the holiday spirit. The females when given the biased version of the survey responded much more positively towards Christmas music earlier in the year with 35% answering before Thanksgiving where only 5% had answered that way on the unbiased one. In the case of the males, the difference was not very significant. There was actually one less person (about 5%) who answered before Thanksgiving on the biased version, but there was also one less person who answered after the week of Christmas. So there were more people in the middle (after Thanksiving) on the biased version. It pulled the data from both extremes to the center. In comparing the two genders, 10% more of the females said for Christmas music to be played earlier than the males did. We thought that this would happen, seeing as in our society usually females get more in to the holiday spirit.

So, What About the Population? The majority of our high school (over 75%) believes that Christmas music should start playing after Thanksgiving or earlier. As a whole the males are slightly more negative to the idea of Christmas music than the females (around a 10% difference).