Pictures and Quotes
There is a
bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good.
~Edwin Denby
Weaknesses
There are several weaknesses present in our study. One primary weakness would be the presence of non-response bias. We handed out 160 surveys and only received approximately 130 back. Response bias would also be considered a weakness because some of the students that took the survey claimed to have danced with more people than seems possible. For example, we had a student who said that they danced with 40 different students, which seems inaccurate. A confounding variable that may have effected the results of our study would be grade level. Most upper-classmen who took our survey went to the dance with a date, meaning that they danced with only one person the entire time. Most freshmen, on the other hand, attended the dance without a date; as a result, they had more dance partners. Another weakness would be students forgetting how many partners they danced with since the dance was 3 months ago. This resulted in students giving estimates of the number of partners they danced with which could have been inaccurate.
Extrapolation
We could extend our population by applying our results to students in other suburban schools in Ohio that have Winter Formal as a school dance. We wouldn't feel comfortable extrapolating our results to schools in urban areas because the school environment and overall life style differs from that of suburban areas. Students who live in urban areas often have more important concerns than attending a school dance. Many of them are probably more concerned with maintaining their safety and having food to eat on a daily basis.
Suggestions for further work
Further work in our study could be done by sampling more students and having a larger sample. We could also obtain data from either past or future dances at North Olmsted High School in order to obtain more accurate data. Also, we could survey students who attend schools in urban areas and compare their results to the results of the students who attend schools in suburban areas.