yiler-huang-want-report [Light]

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====== Data Analysis and Discussion of Perceptions of Necessity and Luxury ======

===== ~Do people of different generational groups have different perceptions about what physical things are a "necessity" and what are a "luxury"?~ =====

By [[yiler-huang| Yiler Huang]]

==== Introduction ====


Recently, we took a survey about different age variety of people's ideas about necessity and luxury because we wanted to know if people at different ages have different kind of perceptions about needs and wants. We interviewed some people on the street and asked their ideas about the topic. This piece of data could be interesting, because we usually don't think about things in different people's perspectives and it would also be useful to know what other people are thinking about.

==== Research Methods ====

In the duration of two days, we interviewed 57 respondents in total. 24 out of them are were students or younger, 20 out of them were workers, 13 out of them were old or retired. We categorized them as three groups, group 1 are the people who were under working age, group 2 are the people who were workers, and group 3 are the retired or old people. We listed 5 items and asked them which ones they thought are necessities, and which ones are luxuries. The items are light, own house, internet, air conditioning, personal car and motorcycle. I am comparing their answers and see if there were any similarities among different age groups. 

==== Data and Discussion ====

=== Table ===

57 respondents, 45 female. 12 male.

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In all the age groups, every respondents said that light is a necessity. About 41 percent among group 1 said owning a house is a luxury, and 40 percent of group 2 said it is a luxury. Meanwhile only about 7.7 percent of group 3 thought it is a luxury. This could be resulted because the traditional thought or stereo old people have. They might think that owning a house is a sign of success and richness. The next item is internet, surprisingly, there weren't much difference between how old and young people answer this question. About 16.6 percent of group 1 said that internet is a luxury, and approximately 10.5 percent of group 2 had the same answer. Surprisingly, there were only 15.3 percent of group 3 said it is a luxury. Originally, I thought old people might think internet is a luxury because they didn't have it when they were younger. I think this could be resulted because how fast the internet grew in the 21st century and how much convenience it brought to human kind, even old people think it is convenient and necessary. Moving onto the next item, air conditioning. Around 41 percent of group 1 said it is a luxury, 25 percent of group had the same answer, and roughly 38.5 percent of group 3 had the same answer. I think the answer of this one is also very surprising. I expected that the older the people are, the more of them would think it is a luxury. However, the people from group 1 and 3 gave very similar answers. I thought this could be because the young people were influenced by the elderlies in their family, because some old people like to give lectures about what a waste it is to leave the air conditioner on. For the last item, personal cars and motorcycles, around 58.3 percent of group 1 said it is a luxury, 80 percent of group 2 said it is a luxury, and 30.7 percent of group 3 had the same answer. I think group 1 had this answer because the younger ones were not old enough to have the ability to ride public transportations, and the older ones have. For the answers from group 2, I think this could be explained very logically. They had this kind of answer because they are currently working people so they know how hard it is to make money more compared to the other two groups, and they probably have a lot more important needs that. Cars and motorcycle were not more necessary than their other needs. I thought there were more old people that thought personal cars and motorcycles are necessity because they don't know that the price of cars and motorcycles were rising and they still think they are as cheap as they were back in the old days.

==== Conclusion ====

In conclusion, we could see that the different age groups share some similarity in items like light, house, and internet. However, there were also items that had answers with a wider gap between vary age groups, such as air conditioning, cars and motorcycle. The results could be reflections of the general thoughts of the current society, and also knowing what do people from different time think about. This result could be very useful if we could collect more datas in the future, and we could have more complicated and accurate results.

==== future decisions ====

From the survey, we could see that the first question wasn't designed well because there were no variety in the answers. Next time, we should test the questions on more people first and dicide if we are putting it into our survey. 

==== Two things that were surprising ====

Originally, I thought there would be more old people that would say that internet is a luxury, but only 2 out of 13 of them did. Most of them said they use it to message their family members or friends. Maybe it could mean that people how designed these technology really thought about how to make old people also have good experiences while using their product. Another thing that surprised me was that there were no one that said light is a necessity. In the survey, we clearly stated that the light means the electric ones, but still non of them thought it is a luxury. I thought there would be a few old people that say they don't need light because they know how to use oil lamp or things like that. I thought this could be resulted by how populated light is in the modern society. Especially in cities, it is harder to find a place that doesn't have light than finding one that has.