• Abstract
• Purpose
• Background
• Study
• Discussion
• Conclusion

Background Research

In order to obtain the information relevant to our topic, we used the Google search engine. We wanted to find out whether any previous studies were conducted that were analogous to ours. First we typed in “high school dance statistics,” into the search bar, and 269,000 results appeared; however, most of them involved private dance academies and other irrelevant topics. We decided to replace the word “dance” from the search bar with the phrase “Winter Formal,” in order to make our search more specific. The Google website provided 59,200 results that primarily dealt with formal fashion shows, safety tips and other information involving Winter Formal that was useless to us.

Since we weren’t coming up with any results that dealt with the number of partners that males and females danced with at a high school dance, we decided to drastically alter our key words. We entered the phrase “number of dance partners” into the search bar hoping that we would find more relevant results. Even though 21,600,000 results came up, once again, none of them were relevant to our topic.

Continuing to browse through Google, we entered “number of dance partners + high school dances,” into the search bar. We found a site that discussed the increase in inappropriate dance behavior; however, it didn’t mention anything about the number of partners danced with at a school dance. This information was posted on http://www.azcentral.com/families/education/articles/0420edfreak-ON.html. Since our goal was to find out if there was a difference in the number of dance partners for high school males and females, we entered the phrase “number of dance partners for girls and guys.” These results mostly contained articles about finding dance partners and how to dance.

Since none of these searches were leading us anywhere, we decided to try something completely new. We entered “observational study + high school dance,” into the search bar. Even though the phrase that we used was somewhat vague, we were still hoping to discover helpful results about statistics at a high school dance; however, not many results showed up and none of them were useful to our study. At this point we realized that it would not be likely to find a previously conducted study that was similar to ours, so we tried to a new approach. We attempted to uncover information about student limitations that could influence the number of partners danced with at a dance.  After searching “behavior and limitations at high school dances,” we found a list of guidelines for a dance at an all boy’s parochial school.  One guideline stated that each student is allowed to bring up to two guests. This limit could influence the number of dance partners each person can have at St. Francis. This information was found on http://www.stfrancishigh.org/Default.aspx?tabid=324. We also found that students were not allowed to slam, body or crowd surf, or bump and grind. This would make a student want to stick with a dance partner that they could trust and who wouldn’t perform any of those dance types. This could potentially cause a drastic decrease in the number of dance partners each student has.

Since the variable of interest was not the limitations that could influence the number of dance partners a student has at a high school dance, we decided to use the actual variable of interest.  We also chose to use a different search engine. We went to www.ask.com and entered “number of dance partners for girls and guys,” into the search bar. The results that came up were similar to the ones that came up when we used Google.  None of the results involved what we were looking for. We started to realize that we were going to get similar results for our searches no matter what search engine we used.  We made sure that our assumption was correct by using Yahoo! and Windows Live Search, and the results were comparable to one another. After performing extensive research on our topic, we concluded that there isn’t a study similar to ours posted on the web.  Unfortunately, all of the results that we came up with were disregarded since none of them were relevant to our topic.