Before the study was conducted, extensive research on the question of which ice cream flavor, vanilla or chocolate, is preferred by girls and boys was done and the results are as follows:

We went on the Internet and we used the search engine Google to search for relevant information regarding our topic. We entered the keywords “favorite ice cream flavors” and the website gave us 22,000,000 results. We viewed a couple of the websites and found results that were not relevant to our study. One such website, “What Ice Cream Flavor Are You?”, it had you fill out a questionnaire to determine your ice cream personality, while another, “Ice Cream Flavorology”, allowed you to select your favorite ice cream flavor and tells you what kind of person you are. A third website that we looked at that was very similar to the ones already described above. This site was called “The Scoop: Your Personal Style” and it informs its visitors about their personality based on their favorite ice cream flavor, similar to the “Ice Cream Flavorology” website. 

If you are interested in visiting these websites, click on http://quiz.ivillage.com/food/tests/icecream.htm or http://www.icecream.com/funfacts/index.asp?b=104 or http://www.beinggirl.com/en_US/articledetail.jsp?ContentId=ART260.

After looking at these sites, we decided to continue our search by adding “for boys and girls” to the keywords. This change brought up 131,000 results. One website showed information that was applicable to our study. It was called “Top 5 Favorite Ice Cream Flavors” and listed the percentages of Americans who buy certain types of ice cream flavors: vanilla 28%, chocolate 8%, Neapolitan 7%, butter pecan 4.5%, and chocolate chip 3.5%.

This information is available at: http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/teachers/ns/article/0,27972,485904,00.html.  

The rest of the sites basically did not pertain to our study. None of the websites specifically addressed preferences of ice cream flavors between boys and girls.

            In search of more information, we typed in the keywords “favorite ice cream flavors survey” and came up with 352,000 results. An article found at CNNMoney.com called “America’s Favorite Ice Cream” contained a survey of eating preferences among Americans. Vanilla was the most popular at 29%, followed by chocolate 8.9% then butter pecan and strawberry each at 5.3%. This provided information can be very helpful to us, because it tells how, on average; people tend to prefer vanilla over various other flavors. In addition, it tells of how much ice cream is consumed by Americans each year and other facts about the ice cream industry.

To view the results of this survey and several other facts, click on

http://money.cnn.com/2005/07/25/pf/goodlife/summer_ice_cream/index.htm

            Overall, we found some very interesting websites. However, most of them did not correspond to our study. The closest we could find were studies on everybody’s favorite ice cream flavor, which included more than chocolate and vanilla. Therefore, we cannot predetermine what our outcomes will be.