Social Media Survey

Group 4
Rebecca Hays
Mary Aja
Daniel Ortiz

EDT 180B
Professor Lewallen
4/21/15

Introduction:

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Social Media Survey

For our research project, we wanted to see if there was a correlation between social media, grade
level and gender. We were interested to see what types of social media are most popular among
different grades and genders, as well as what purposes they used social media for. We also
wanted to find out the average time these students spend using social media by grade level and as
a whole. We surveyed a total of 26 students with a total of five questions. We asked them to give
their gender, their grade level, all prefered forms of social media, all uses for social media and
how many hours they spend using social media daily.

Discussion:
After receiving all of the survey results, the first thing that we looked at was the gender
demographics. As seen in the chart below, the majority of the participants were female. We had
17 females participate and 9 males, giving us a total of 26. The females contributed to 65.4% of
our data and the males contributed to 34.6% of our data, which may have affected the accuracy
of the results due to the fact that there was not an equal amount of participants for each gender.

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Social Media Survey

We then analyzed the amount of participants from each grade level. As seen in the chart below,
there were 20 freshman, 2 sophomores, 4 juniors, and 0 seniors that took part in our survey. The
majority of the participants were freshman, which may have altered the results. Our conclusions
would be more accurate if we had an equal amount of students participate from each grade level.

Next, we looked at which type of social media the students prefered. Rather than breaking it up
by grade level (since it would be misleading), we used the overall results. Snapchat was the
number 1 pick in this survey, followed closely by Instagram and Facebook. The fourth most
popular social media was Pinterest, and then Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, and then LinkedIn. LinkedIn
came in dead last, with a whopping 0 users.

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Social Media Survey

We then took this analysis a bit further and broke it down by gender. The chart below shows the
types of social media used by males and females. The most popular social media sites among the
females was Instagram and Tumblr. The most popular social media sites among the males was
Facebook and Snapchat. The least popular social media sites among the females was LinkedIn
and Vine, and the least popular among the males as LinkedIn and Pinterest.

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Social Media Survey

We then evaluated the reasons for use of social media among all of the students. We found that
the two most popular reason for use were entertainment and communication. News came in third,
followed by networking. In last place was self-promotion. As you can see in the chart below,
almost all participants chose entertainment as their reason for use of social media, and very few
selected self-promotion. The self-promotion category may have been low due to the fact that
most of our participants were fairly young, and self-promotion may be used more in the business
world, rather than first year college students.

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Social Media Survey

We then broke that analysis down further and looked at the reasons for social media use by
gender. As seen in our chart below, the number one use for both genders was the same;
entertainment. The least common use of social media was the same for both genders as well,
self-promotion. This gives our data a lot of credibility because the overall data and the data by
gender was relatively similar. The second most popular use by females was communication,
followed by networking, news, and finally self-promotion. The second most popular use by
males was news, followed by communication, networking, and finally self-promotion.

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Social Media Survey

The last thing that our group looked at was the average amount of hours that students used social
media per day. Overall, the average was 4 hours. As seen in the chart below, the average amount
for freshman was 4.55 hours. The average for sophomores was 3.5 and the average amount for
juniors was 1.75. The average hours for seniors was zero. This is misleading, however the reason
it is zero is because none of our participants for this survey were seniors. This swayed our
results, which is why there is such a drastic difference. There were also very few participants that
were sophomores or juniors, which is another reason this could be misleading. If one student
were to put an extremely high or low answer, it would have a huge impact on our results.

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Social Media Survey

Analysis:
When looking at the charts and data that were accumulated on social media use, there are
noticeable trends to analyze. Out of all social media the three most popular were Facebook
Instagram and Snapchat. The most popular uses for social media were communication and
entertainment. Another trend from popular use that was noticed, is the use of social media for
news was much more common in males than in the females. Even though 9 males were asked
compared to 17 females, there was a count of 8 males that said they used social media for news,
compared to only 5 females. Lastly, even though there were more freshmen surveyed, the
average hours of social media use was highest in freshman, followed by sophomores, and
juniors. Other questions that come to mind are if social media has an effect on grades. If the
survey were conducted again I would make sure there was a more diverse sample group in grade
level. Trends based on grade would be more meaningful if there were more sophomores juniors

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Social Media Survey

and seniors. A more equal amount of males and females would also show trends better for the
data set. This couldnt be accomplished in our survey due to the class surveyed containing
mostly freshman and female students.