Cissy Chen

I think our research questions are quite interesting, but it is also hard to test. Because economic recession may influence a lot of things, we have to have enough samples to find accurate results. However, our samples are still too few. When we did the survey, I some people didn’t want to tell strangers their salaries even though in ranges. Some people didn’t remember their spending on food. I also think not everybody take that survey seriously because I found they didn’t read the questions carefully and just did as quick as possible. Hopefully people can be nice to someone who wants you to do a survey. It just takes a little time for you, but it really means a lot for us. Also, I sincerely want some stores can let us do the surveys inside the store. All scientific research needs surveys; we need place to do that.

Andrea Lai

I definitely felt like we were overambitious in choosing this research question. We chose this topic for interest; we did not clearly think through the ramifications of choosing a question in which so many variables could not be controlled. Halfway throughout the project, caught myself thinking that the data we collected may actually have no relation to the effects of the economic recession at all because the way people chose to answer their surveys could have been affected by numerous things. This probably could have been avoided if we had a clear understanding of how we would analyze the data we collected. We had a difficult time because we did not learn regression until weeks after we had started our survey, and by that time, we were too far into our project to start fresh. I feel that perhaps we should have chosen a research question with data that we could analyze with the chi-square test, which was the only thing we had covered when developing our research question. Not having a clear idea of the data analysis technique we would use also caused problems with our survey. We had to entirely rewrite our first survey because we realized that our questions did not answer our research question, were not specific enough or did not yield significant data. It was very discouraging. In hindsight, I think this problem would also have been solved by choosing a research question we could answer using discrete data analysis methods. If we had been less ambitious overall, and preceded with a research question we had a clear idea of how to answer, our project would have gone much more smoothly.

Evan Sudiono

First and most important thing I learned in this project is that I never want to do a survey again! It takes a long time, it can be depressing, and it is very tiring. It was also difficult figuring out which testing method we actually needed to use and which sampling method works best with our resources and time limit. Depressing as in people is usually in such a rush that they can’t be bothered by doing our totally awesome and world-impacting survey, which they would miss out on. One of our survey’s main problems was that it was rather long and can take a while to finish, not mentioning it could be inaccurate because the customers are just making rough guesses for the questions. Some of the problems that arose came from the fact that we were working in a group. Most of the time we have one person leading the discussion and the rest of us either not caring or not being interested enough, and this was a double-edged sword. On one hand, we could decide on a course of action easily and quickly because everyone just agreed to the idea. On the other hand, a lack of opinions proved troublesome when we tried surveying people for the first time. We were not able to see the errors and possible problems in the survey the first time, and so we had to redo the whole thing. That and it took us much longer to think of the hypotheses, research question, and analysis methods. There are also the usual problems of people being late or not being able to make it to a meeting, as well as some people caring too much or too little. The most apparent problem however, is the lack of understanding between group members. Sometimes, we have trouble explaining our opinions well. Therefore it takes a while for the whole group to understand the idea.

Michelle Yang

I learned lots of things from this project. However, there were also the downsides from this project. I learned how to communicate more with people while I was doing our survey. I also learned how to corporate different things together to the completion of our project. Despite of all those gains, there were also losses. While doing our survey, I learned that it is hard to do a survey. Sometimes people rejected to do our survey, and that was encouraging for me. And, it was also time consuming. Furthermore, because we are using different fields to do our project, I realized that it was hard to combine them together without missing other important things. For example, we didn’t really think of what method are we going to use to analyze our research question. Thus, we found difficulties towards discussing our data using the method that we have learned. Overall, I think time is our biggest problem here because a good work needs lots of time. Furthermore, the economic part  of this project also challenging for us, but it is a pretty interesting project to do; to connect foods with the current economic crisis right now. Despite of our lack of economic background, I thought we did a good job. So, I hope that we really did well in this project.

Anita Ying

In my opinion, there is not much that one can do during an economic crisis. Controlling the budget and preparing for the worst is likely the only actions that can be taken. In terms of food expenditure, I do not think grocery spending would vary due to the essential need to eat; however, dining out is not a necessity. Re-budgeting the family’s finances is also a wise decision. Mortgage, car loan, life insurance, and daily spending can all be re-evaluated in their priorities and money should be spent on what is most crucial. As well, making good investments may lead to new prospects for investors. If we are the victims of a recession, we can stay positive and take the chance of learning new skills to create more opportunities for ourselves.

I thought our research question was incredibly interesting but difficult to tackle. It would have been helpful if we had more resources, such as a larger sample size, more students to collect the big sample size, and a further knowledge of economics. Knowing what makes an effective and appealing survey to an interviewee may have given us more accurate results. I also wished that some of the statistical techniques taught in the later part of the course were introduced earlier so that we would have a clear idea on how we wanted to present our data.

Graph result

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Original Survey

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Revised Survey

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Things to do

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Potential Research Questions

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