Academic Report About People's Needs and Wants

By Steve Wang

This research aims to find out if people of different generational groups have different perceptions about what physical things are a necessity and what is a luxury. This research will help understand people across diverse age groups which will allow us to better interact with one another.

To do this research, we stuck the names of 5 items on a whiteboard and put a magnet over those five items. The participants, who were people that happened to be around the school at that time, had to move the magnets to the left or the right of the names of those items. If an item was a necessity they would have to move the corresponding magnet to the left. However, if it was a luxury, they would have to move it to the right. We tried to find participants of all ages but most people from age group 3 were not interested in helping us. So, we got very few answers from age group 3 compared to the rest. Another issue with our data is that there were significantly more females than males. That may have been caused by the lack of males in that area at that time. Also, the area we could sample people from was restricted so, the people that were gathered in that area might be similar.

M = Male

F = Female

1 = students and kids

2 = working aged adults

3 = retired elderly people

From the data, I can conclude that on average, age group 3 has the least things they deem as luxuries. That may be because of the poorer standard of living when they were growing up compared to modern times. To get these conclusions, I looked at all the percentages of wants. When comparing the percentages of things age group 3 deems as luxuries to both of the other groups, all items except two were lower than other age groups. One item which was not the lowest was the air conditioning which was only higher than group 1 but lower than group 2. The other item was light, in which all people we asked agreed that lights were a necessity. So, having the lowest percentage of three out of the five options shows me that people from age group 3 usually have fewer things they deem as luxuries for life. When comparing the differences in opinion within age groups 1 and 2, it was very difficult to conclude anything because both age groups 1 and 2 have two items where their percentages are the highest. After making these observations, I can conclude that there are different perceptions about what physical things are a necessity and what is a luxury between age groups 2 and 3 and 1 and 3. It might be because, during the time between age groups 2 and 3, a big change may have happened. It might also have been the time when people's standard of living increased.

Before doing this research, I thought that the younger each age group is, the more things they would consider a necessity. I thought so because I am from age group 1 and when I talk to people from different age groups, I always got the impression that they would have fewer things they deem necessary when compared to me. From the results, it has proven to be true only when comparing age group 3 to the other two groups. I think that my guess might have been more accurate if I talked to more people.

Learning from the data gathered could be useful when talking to different people. When talking to people and knowing about their opinions on necessities and luxuries, will help us understand a lot more about them. For example, if I was talking to a young man who was in university and was wearing designer clothes, shoes, accessories, etc., I can know from the data gathered that he probably thinks of those things as wants and is likely very proud of them. So, a good way to strike up a conversation with him would be to talk about his clothing, shoes, or accessories.

One surprising thing was, most of age group 3 did not think more of the items as luxuries. I thought they would consider most items as luxuries because, I reasoned that if they grew up with a poorer standard of living, they might have needed little to survive and feel content. It was also weird that people from age group 3 kept refusing to help us. I always thought people from age group 3 liked to talk with others and liked to have a conversation because they might be bored from retirement. From the multiple refusals, I think we should change our approach when talking to people from age group 3. I think so because one of the only times I have been successful when talking to some from age group 3 was when I started the conversation by asking about what activity she was doing. The person responded by talking to me for a bit then we eventually convinced her to help us. So, maybe when talking to old people, we should pretend we want to get to know them and care about what they are doing before asking them to do something for us. Another surprising thing was, there was not much change between age group 1 and age group 2. I thought or hoped that there would be more consistent changes between them so that my theory would prove true and make this conclusion easier to write.

In conclusion, from the data, we can see that age group 3 has more things they would consider necessary compared to the other two groups. Comparing the data from age groups 1 and 2, the data was quite similar for the most part. So, no real conclusion can be derived from the comparison between those two. To conclude those two groups, we could go out and get more answers. We could also try to get participants from different areas which might allow us to get different answers.