Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Weaknesses in our study could be that students were only given the options ‘yes’ or ‘no’ thus they may not have given honest answers. Many factors play a role in a student’s decision to move or not (as mentioned in our background info). Issues ranging from financial situations, to job placement, to geographic features may change a student’s mind. Furthermore, grade level may have influenced students’ decisions. For example, freshmen students may be more likely to aspire to live somewhere else, while upperclassmen may think more critically and opt to stay in Ohio.

We would not feel comfortable extrapolating our results because the student population at every school is different and diverse. Furthermore, we feel as though our results are not the best very representation of the population of students attending North Olmsted High School, so it would not make sense to apply the data to a broader population.

We suggest further study into this topic, perhaps by giving students a third ‘Undecided’ option, so that they may be able to answer more honestly if they are unable to choose between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. We would also suggest applying this new study to more than a single high school in Ohio, and to a sample of students larger than 200 from each high school. Furthermore, we would suggest tracking results of a larger sample size over the span of a few years, perhaps four- so that students are surveyed each year they attend high school, to observe how students’ opinions change or remain the same over time.