Favorite Fruits
Overall our study is well conducted and follows the
guidelines set to sample a population correctly, however no study is perfect.
One problem is that we didn’t get a response from every person who was
administered a survey; this could have an impact on the results. A second factor
is age, as we get older our tastes and preferences for food generally changes,
we could like apples freshman year and change to bananas by junior or senior
year. The third most prevalent factor would be ethnicity; different cultures are
raised on different kinds of food. Americans are more likely to eat a wide
variety of fruit, especially apples. People raised in other countries have less
fruit variety and there taste for fruits could be impacted.
As far as extending the survey to other populations, I would
be confident in using the results on a scale as large as the county of Cuyahoga
or possibly even the state of Ohio. The people in the county eat the same type
of food throughout, and the state of Ohio is not that big so the markets are
relatively the same. With people buying the same foods and eating fairly similar
meals, they will develop similar taste preferences. Look at Louisiana, everyone
down there loves Cajun food because they all eat Cajun food. The same can be
said for many other states.
If a student or statistic enthusiast wishes to continue they
could do several different studies. They could do a study that instead based on
sex do the variable on age, or ethnicity. If you could gather the data you could
see how different parts of the world prefer different types of fruit. You could
follow people over the course of their life and see if their favorite fruit
changes throughout the years.