Mini-survey

I. Introduction

Since smoking is a hot issue all over the world, people care about their health more seriously. Seal said, “smoking has been conclusively linked to many other diseases as well, including bronchitis, emphysema, larynx cancer, and pancreatic cancer” (1998, p. 31). This survey is about what percentage of males and females smoke, why they keep smoking and what is the best way to quit smoking.

II. Purpose

EAP1 Writer’s Workshop members did this survey together; we wanted to find out what percentages of males and females smoked, and why they smoked and for smokers and non-smokers, why smokers can’t quit smoking, and what they think is the best way to quit smoking.

III. Hypothesis/ Hypotheses

There are more and more female smokers nowadays; smoking is not just man’s thing anymore. Maybe there is much pressure for females in this society, and females reduce stress by smoking? Do they think smoking is cool? Non-smokers started smoking because of their friends smoking? Are smokers addicted? Is there any way to quit smoking? We wanted to know the percentage of smokers for each gender, why they smoke and what they think is the best way to quit smoking.

IV. Materials

The survey questionnaire is one page; all of the questions are multiple choice. It’s separated by male and female first, because I think that’s pretty important in the smoking problem. There are seven questions for both male and female and for smokers and non-smokers. And there are three questions for smokers; generally it’s about whether they smoke alone or with people, whether they smoke in private or in public, and are whether they are addicted. There are questions for both smokers and non-smokers about why they think smokers started smoking and what they think is the best way to quit smoking.

V. Methods

We asked forty-three people, all CESL students in SIU around the campus on a Thursday in July. And I was waiting for them while they finished the survey and gave it to me. I think it was pretty fair and convenient; of course they are not representative of all students and Americans. We just surveyed forty-three students at the same university.

VI. Data

See appendix A Appendix A

VII. Results

From the Excel chart, it showed that only 21.1 percent of smokers are females, and another 78.9 percent of smokers are males, from the 43 people who participated in this survey. Female smokers are a quarter of male smokers, in the survey data there are many more male smokers than female smokers.

VIII. Discussion and Conclusion

The result were different from my hypotheses. I think the reason is that we just surveyed the CESL students, the participating number is too limited, and maybe they lied to us, because we never met before and maybe they thought it was not that important and they felt embarrassed. there are no doubt many female smokers all over the world; I can see many female smokers in the campus. If I do this experiment again, I will survey more people and not just CESL students, also survey American students and people who are out of the campus and other states people as much as I can, so that I can get the average number of smokers and more correct data.

IX Reference

Seal, B. (1998). Smoking. In Academic Encounters: Human behavior. Pp. 31-33. New York: Cambridge University Press.

X. Appendices A, B