POLL
Question 1: Do you think hunting, fishing, and harvesting wildlife should be a constitutional right?
A. Yes
B. No
C. I don't hunt, fish, or harvest wildlife
D. I don't know/care
Question 2: Should the state legislature be allowed to regulate hunting, fishing, and harvesting wildlife to certain seasons or should you be allowed to hunt and fish whenever you like?
A. During approved seasons
B. Whenever I please
C. Only to manage population control
D. I don't know/care
Question 3: Should hunters need a permit or license to hunt big game?
A. Yes
B. No, I should be able to hunt big game if I please
C. I don't know/care
Question 4: What would you consider to be reasonable restriction?
A. Certain percent of the game population
B. Exclude mating season
C. Both of these restrictions
D. Neither of these restrictions
Above are the total results of the poll as a whole. The graph shows total responses for each question. They are not broken down by any demographic of any sort. Overall, it seemed that many people that answered the poll didn't hunt or didn't know/care that hunting should be a right of the people as defined by the Constitution of the United States. However, the same group of people thought that you should have a license and should only allowed to be hunt during approved seasons without any restriction.
When broken into groups between Honors students and Gen. Ed. students, it seemed that the Honors students weren't typically interested in hunting and that the Gen. Ed. students were impartial to either side. Answers C and D were selected most often as expected by the pollsters.
To no surprise, there were far less females that cared about hunting and fishing than there were males. Men tended to believe that hunting should be a Constitutional right whereas females said they don't hunt or fish. Question 2 showed that both men and women, regardless of their answer to Question 1, felt that hunting should only be allowed during approved seasons. The majority of responses, regardless of gender landed on answers A and C for Question 3. People either believed that you need a license, or they didn't care. Question 4 was nearly identically split between restricting hunting/fishing and not restricting it at all.
Voters involved in extracurriculars were far outnumbered by those who were not involved in extracurriculars, as displayed in the graphs. It is difficult to determine a correlation based on the results, although most of the votes were tallied reflected lack of knowledge or personal preference on the matter.
Randomness
Randomness was fairly easy to achieve during this polling project. The only thing that we did specifically was make sure we got an even number of both males and females. We kept a separate spreadsheet for each gender to keep things organized. As far as randomness goes, we basically just asked people that we didn't know or recognize. Asking around at lunch was the best way to achieve randomness because people sit, well, at random throughout the area.
Possible Sources of Error
When trying to achieve randomness it is fairly easy to also make some errors. For example, 70% of the people that we polled were not involved in any sort of extracurricular, whether that be athletics or club involvment. This was actually a very surprising to our group because we thought more of the school was involved than it actually is. With an error like this, our results are going to be skewed much more towards the side of people not involved in any extracurricular activities. Also, there may have been an extremely slight error in counting of the votes, but that seems really unlikely. Also, the order in which our answers were read off to the person being polled may have influenced their decision in identifying an answer.
Hey Guys!
ReplyDeleteOk so yeah it Is really weird that That many people that you polled weren't in any extra curricular activities. I honestly think that one of the biggest errors that you guys made was Not asking about the person's hunting history. If you had known out of how many people you polled, how many actually Went hunting, that would have been the best statistic you could have found. I mean you can tell from the crazy amounts of "Idk/Idc" answers you can tell that a lot of them probably Didn't, but I'm sure some did. From those that Did you could've made charts showing the opinions of those who actually have a personal stake in the matter. Those who hunt are going to actually give a crap over those who don't. Without that statistic it's hard to tell where people are coming from in their answers.
I think it is kind of funny/very predictable that women actually considered the "time limitations" presented in Question 2 and actually voted for them as opposed to the men who didn't care or wanted to hunt whenever they wanted. Typical thinking women and self-centered non-caring men.
It just seems overall that the majority of people really did Not care about hunting. I mean, I don't hunt, but I have strong opinions about these ideas and I would have thought that more people would have just chosen a side rather than put they didn't care. Oh well. Nice job though!
Ya i noticed alot of people said they didnt really care about hunting haha. People dont get out much anymore i guess lol. anyway i could definately notice that you polled alot more people who were not in extracurricular than people who were. But thats all good.
ReplyDeleteDont really know what to say! nothing negative really stands out besides the large amount of people who didnt care. Great job!
Wow. Ryan was right. Not many people cared or even knew, but those are the answers we should expect from apathetic high schoolers. Goood job on the graphs and polling. Most people had similar views and the catergories didnt make much of a difference on the voters views. The only category that made somewhat of a significant impact on the cleavage of the graph was people in extracurricular activities which some of these students could possibly be hunters.
ReplyDeleteYeah it definitely made sense that men cared more about hunting than women and wanted to hunt whenever they pleased in comparison to women. Like Sam said, it probably would've been better to ask about their hunting history. And i wonder how the results would've differed if you had done the poll in a state where hunting is really a big deal like in montana or something haha. But still...good job! haha i just understood your group name now.
ReplyDeleteYour poll raises a lot of interesting ideas about high school students.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense that students either a) don't hunt, fish, etc or b) don't care about the Constitutional rights of those who do. Perhaps part of this is that many students who do not engage in these activities also do not talk about them often, either in their classes or otherwise. As AP history students, we are exposed to constant analysis of and debate over current issues, and it sometimes I think we neglect to remember that other students in general education government classes may not have such meaningful discussions about current issues such as this one.
Your gender cleavage makes sense and is effectively presented. I expected these results as well, so it was nice to see that we have skill enough to predict some portion of the data, even if it is small.
In response to Sam's comment- it can be really difficult to find students in extracurricular activities because usually one cannot tell this just by looking at the person. It is a lot of trial and error, in my opinion, and if we had enough time to poll every student in the school, I think the results would be much more telling. Great effort though, especially at a task like that one.
Order of the answer choices is another significant cleavage, and I know that our group dealt with that in the beginning stages of our questions, while they were still under revision- definitely something to pay attention to.
Nice job guys :)
ReplyDeleteSo the contradiction in people saying that they did not know or care about hunting yet approved of regulations pertaining to hunting. This shows the unsteadiness of those polled. Once more with this poll being only taken at Boulder Creek in Anthem, which is suburbia and not noted to care much on hunting. If this poll pertained to people in regions in which hunting was more accessible, popular, or approved of, these polls would have looked excedingly different.
Your answer choices for question 1 struck me a little funny, I feel like option C "I don't hunt, fish, or harvest wildlife" detracted from the poll. I think that if only the other three options were given, people would have had to put a little though into their answers and would have picked yes or no. Also, you say that 70% of the people you polled were not involved in any extracurricular activity, which means they are probably also not into things like hunting, or to be honest, anything outside of their house. If the ratio of people involved in extracurriculars was more equal to the students not involved in extracurriculars more students who have hunted would have been polled. With that aside, you guys did a fantastic job, this was a hard topic, especially conducting the poll in a state that doesn't have very much hunting, and being limited to high school students.
ReplyDeleteI believe that people should only hunt, fish, etc., if they have meaning behind it, for instance to use the meat or other resources that are provided by the animal. I do not see the fun in sitting in a tree during the wee hours of the morning waiting forever for a deer to pass by so that it can be shot unknowingly by a rifle. It is pointless.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in the end it is what it is and if indeed an animal does go instinct than so be it.
I liked your questions - very direct and easy to understand. The graphs are very clear and convey a lot of data, which is nice (less scrolling). I was not surprised in the least about the gender gap; women are stereotypically less interested in hunting, and it shows that this apathy starts at a young age. I was also not surprised at how many people didn't care about the topic in general. I think the best way to avoid these non-answers is to simply give them (the students being polled) fewer choices. Eliminating the middle-of-the-road "I don't know" answer would have gotten you slightly clearer answers. I love the website!
ReplyDeleteI am not sure what exactly my reaction is to your poll results. Unlike the other poll, I am not genuinely shocked at the results or ever be able to predict your results. But I was stumped when I analyzed your graph that shows all the results of your poll. The reason I was stumped is because the result for Question 3 portrays that the majority of students do not care about hunting, the result seems absurd when you consider that Arizona is for gun rights and has a significant population of hunters. Also, the lakes or ponds (or small bodies of water) at the Anthem Community Center are constantly used by fishers (or men). But considering the result for Question 3, I can only conclude that Boulder Creek students and their families do not hunt or are not interested in hunting, fishing, and harvesting.
ReplyDeleteI too liked your questions, they were very clear with very clear answers, that didn't provide any sort of bias, or things that could possibly sway the results. Graphs are well made, and do a good job in showing the results of this polling project. The results I also find interesting, and I have to wonder if kids in more hunting-friendly states would care about it more than they do in Arizona?
ReplyDeleteHey guys- Your work looks awesome! You guys had awesome questions. They were very straight forward and easily understood. I think it would have been good to ask the individuals if they had ever hunted before. By doing that you could better understand your results since you guys had so many "I don't care"s and "I don't know"s. But that kind of response may just be typical to high school kids who are often floating in their clouds of dgaf. Its obvious that women are less into the hunting scene compared to men which is shown by the gender gap in your graphs. Your graphs look awesome and the blog is visually pleasing. Bravo guys!
ReplyDeleteOverall, you guys did a very good job. I agree with everyone that if you guys had asked if they hunted or not, that for all of those who answered “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” there would have been more understanding as to why they picked that answer. Other than that, I find it interesting how a lot of the people that you polled were not in extracurricular activities. I agree with Brandon that it makes sense that women are as into hunting and therefore the gender gap makes sense too. Besides few things, good job you guys!!
ReplyDeleteInteresting topic. I wouldn't have thought to ask one on this, and the results were as such revealing. I guess in some ways it makes sense that so many people said they didn't care or know- hunting isn't necessarily that popular among most people our age, at least not in an area like Anthem. It also could have to do with what Brandon said about how, as a large amount of high schoolers tend not to have highly polarized view on issues, when given an option where they can effectively cop out and just "Well, I don't know...", they would tend to choose it. However, I think the questions were well written and concise, and your methodology for getting answers was sound.
ReplyDeleteOverall, good job!
I really like the topic and the questions you guys asked. I found your comment concerning the fact that many individuals do not care yet still have an opinion on restriction rather interesting. The results concerning women versus men is not surprising considering generally more men are interested in hunting than women. It is also not surprising that many individuals did not care considering a decent percentage of the population does not hunt. I also find it interesting that such a large percentage of the individuals you polled were not involved in clubs. I really liked your analysis of your possible sources of error as well.
ReplyDeleteYour questions were very straightforward and I didn't feel a hint of biased in any of them! Good job! I feel that this topic isn't that strong of a topic that can be used in Anthem were it is a suburban area where few people hunt. I wasn't surprised with the answers because of that. Still, nice questions and good clear graphs.
ReplyDeleteNice job guys. I like your topic. I think that( as Jake also said) option C on question 1 kind of distracts from the actually question. By omitting that option people would have had to make a stance on whether or not they thought it should be a constitutional right rather than just stating that they don't participate. But overall, nice job on the questions. They were to the point and nonbiased. The gender gap didn't surprise me either. It is stereotypical that men care more about hunting than women and your graphs showed that well.
ReplyDeleteGreat job on this! I like how easy your questions are for the average person to answer, which is nice for trying to collect data during the short opportunities at school. I think one of the reasons that most said they didn't care was, we live in Arizona. Now, I'm new to this state, but it sure seems like people here don't have a lot to hunt in comparison to more forested areas of the US, like Washington or North Dakota, that may be a reason for the difference in the polling. Also, we are pro-guns here but not neccessarily for hunting, also for personal defense against the crime near here in Phoenix, so pro-firearms students aren't going to always be pro-hunting. I agree with Sam that a question on if they hunt should be seperate so you could use that information in the analysis.
ReplyDelete