We collected 100 valid responses in two days and divided the analysis of our questionnaire into two phases.
In the first stage of analysis, we drew graphs of answers to every individual question, so that we could have a general look into our respondents personal details and their views on friends and making friends.
In the first stage of analysis, we drew graphs of answers to every individual question, so that we could have a general look into our respondents personal details and their views on friends and making friends.
We have a double number of female respondents than male respondents, which is not very good for making a comparison between the 2 groups of people. Admittedly, it is a disadvantage of online questionnaire because it is open to all and we cannot choose people to answer.
Most of our respondents are college students, so our result is not representative for all generations but mainly for young people.
We have got a quite balanced number of White and Asian respondents. So it will be good to analyze all the questionnaire answers in terms of ethnicity and make a good comparison.
Most of our respondents have received an undergraduate degree or are still having their higher education, so they are all highly educated and differences in educational background is not significant.
Our respondents are from various occupations or degrees of study. (Note: respondents choosing other are mainly BASc students who feel their degree cannot fit into any of the category.)
For this question, we received a roughly equal number of responses for each option, which again, is very good for making comparison.
A high percentage of respondents prefer fewer and closer friends.
Our respondents provide many good suggestions listed in the ‘’other’’ section and many of them mention ‘’happiness’’, which suggests many times people make friends not for specific purposes but only to make them feel happy.
This is another example suggesting that people do not deliberately make friends. They can do it in anywhere as long as they meet the right person.
For this question, most people choose ‘’It does not matter’’. We will look at individual response to see who are more likely to choose ‘’same’’.
The three most popular characteristics of friends are honesty (65%), reliable (55%) and humorous (53%), while assertive and dominant are the least popular. Combined with answers for the last question, it seems that there are some common characteristics of friends that most people are looking for, and this is not depends on their personal characteristics.
Interestingly, most people choose ‘’It does not matter’’. It would be good to ask how people get along with friends of different interests in the interview. For people choosing ‘’Yes’’, the next stage of analysis will try to explore if there is a specific group of people tending to choose this option.
Most people choose ‘’No’’ or ‘’It depends’’, which suggests that age difference does not seem to be a big problem when making friends.
From the result shown above, most people seem to value physical appearance not that much.
Roughly 60% of respondents think cultural background does matter, while 40% think no. Difference exists, but not much. We could ask people in the interview why they think cultural difference creates problem or why not and talked about their own experience of making friends across different culture.
This question seems to cause controversy: the answers nearly split into half and half. We will look at respondents’ personal information to see whether we could find a group of people who are more in favor of one option.