Discussion
Weaknesses
A. Our study was difficult to obtain all the results. At first, we only collected data on three days at three different times but then we realized that we only had an n value of three. This would not be enough to complete our hypothesis test.
We decided to go back to McDonalds and collect results in ten minute intervals on three different days. We did not include the drive through McDonald’s customers which could have changed our results. The times we visited McDonald’s varied, however we did go after school one day around 2:30 PM.
Most people are working at this time and the majority of high school students were still in school. We may have excluded certain customers this way. We had a hard time deciding if we were going to count small children as customers, but in the end we counted everyone.
For one customer, it was almost impossible to differentiate if they were a male or a female based on their looks. We marked them down as a male due to their physique. Our study is not an overview of all people who eat out. It was just a study on the persons who dine in at the North Olmsted McDonalds.
Extrapolation
B. We do not feel comfortable extrapolating this data for several reasons. Primarily, our study took place at specific times of the day which influence the results tremendously. Extrapolation to different times of the day would be well out of the range of our data because the clientele would change
considerably at different times of the day. Furthermore, we are aware that extrapolation to other McDonald’s locations would also be inappropriate. The demographics at the North Olmsted McDonald’s and other McDonald’s locations are likely to differ, perhaps significantly. An extrapolation of our data would lead to misleading results.
Further Suggestions
C. Further work could be made including drive through McDonald’s customers. That way it is a complete representation of how many women eat McDonalds compared to men. The observations should be uniformly taken during different times of day on different days so certain customers are not excluded from the study.
The observations can be taken somewhere besides just the North Olmsted McDonalds. North Olmsted is compromised of 48.3% males and 51.7% of females. Going to another city with a different demographic may affect the results of the study.