HW 53- Survey Reflection

Taking this survey was very interesting at a surface level. It didn't make me think very deeply about my life until I hit the short answer questions. I realized that while I am very comfortable being me, and happy in my life, I wouldn't mind changing a few things about myself. Changing the way I feel and think is not what I want to, nor intend to do, but changing certain aspects of my interactive self might be a step in the right direction.

I feel that I am a confident individual for the most part, but sometimes this confidence becomes an absolute certainty that I am right and have found the best way to live and think that their is. This is bordering on over confidence which in a way is the same as lacking in confidence. Being unable to say that I am wrong is a problem that causes me to take very opinionated positions when it comes to how I view other people.

I also realized through taking this survey that the goals of my physical self and my mental self are quite different. My physical self wants to interact with more sexual partners (college should provide me with that). Gain more mass (muscle). Thus I try and exercise to gain muscle mass and interact socially with friends (to increase the likely hood of "getting lucky"). My mental self is thoughtful, critical of the world and concerned with how I can use my life to make a difference in the world. The main difference that I see between the goals of my mental and physical self is that my physical self seeks immediate gratification, while my mental self seeks gradual development.

Some of the survey questions were relatively thought based and I wasn't really able to answer accurately. Questions where I was asked about "what my friends thought about me" or "what my family thinks about me" were solely based off of my own inferences into the actions and words of my friends and family. I feel good about the fact that I believe with little doubt in my mind that my parents and brother and extended family all understand me, and accept me for who I am.

Part 3

Yesterday in class we looked over the results from our class survey. I spent most of my time trying to find questions which would reveal inconsistencies in the common opinion of those who participated in the survey. Some of these pairs I found were very insightful on a basic level, and could have been caused by a lack of thought being put into how certain people responded to the questions. Other questions showed me something much deeper about people's thoughts and behaviors.

The most interesting pieces of data that I analyzed were the results of two questions, one about life, and the other about death. The first question asked if he/she was afraid of death. Between the two most positive responses, 40.3% of people said that they were indeed afraid of death. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 57.7% (between the top two most positive response options) of the people surveyed said that their life was meaningful.

This seemed intriguing to me at first, but I wasn't immediately able to find what made this data so revealing. After I thought about what these responses really meant, it hit me. I realized that people who are afraid of death generally feel that they have not had the opportunity to live their lives to the fullest, and are living in fear that it will all end without them being able to accomplish their goals.

Going off of this premise, it than struck me as strange that over half of the people surveyed believed that they were living meaningful lives. What does "meaningful" really mean? We explored this partly in the digital unit, and we were going on [I felt] a great path, but we really never revisited it. The idea of living a meaningful life is extremely complex, and clearly needs a great deal more of discussion before we can fully and properly complete our investigations on human interaction and behavior in this unit

The conclusion I drew was this. People are complicated! Sam Kaplan said it in class, but it definitely applies well here, so I thought I'd jux the phrase for my own use. People are complex, we aren't computers, so our minds don't work with binary code. Their may be black and white, but their is a grey area for most ethical and philosophical questions that is massive. Looking at this data in one way may lead me to a conclusion about something that might be completely refuted if I were to look at it from another perspective.

Part 4

Well the main difference that I found with the surveys which were professionally done, and the survey we did, is that the "professional" ones were more like a synthesis, and analysis of the data, as opposed to the raw data which we see in our survey. The great thing about looking at our survey as opposed to say the New York City Department of Health survey was that the analyses and inferences were made by ourselves as opposed to being told what the data "means" and given suggestions as how to interpret the findings.

If you have a survey that incorporates two components, where one is the raw data, and the other is made up of the various conclusions made, the survey both allows the viewer to make their own conclusions, and decide if they agree with some more complicated or less obvious connections that were made with the data.

The thing to keep in mind as we continue on with our exploration into surveys is that in statistics, a connection can be made between pretty much any two things, but that doesn't mean that it is the truth. In short, words can be deceitful, numbers don't lie.