Analysis

I began my analysis by asking: "How often do you communicate with your friends through the following:" As we see below, 50% of respondents said that they use face to face communication very often to communicate with their friends. By contrast, 37.8% of respondents said that they use text messaging to communicate with their friends. Finally, 69.7% of respondents said that they use phone calls often to communicate with their friends. From this we see that in this situation, text messaging is the least preferred way of communication. I then asked “How often do you communicate with your parents using the following:” Here we see that 48.8% of respondents said that they rarely use face to face communication to talk to their parents. By contrast, 38% of respondents said that they often use text messaging to communicate with their  parents. Finally, 57.1% of respondents said that they use phone calls very often as a means of communicating with their parents. One way to explain this is that my sample was a bias sample because most of my facebook friends, which are the only ones that would have access to the survey, are college students therefore this may help give insight as to why face to face communication is such a low percentage in this case, and phone calls is the highest response. Next, I asked "Which of the following would you be most likely to use to convey bad news?"  Here we see that 72% responded that they would rather tell the person face to face.  By contrast, 16.1% said a phone call would be more appropriate.  Finally, a mere 11.8% said that text messaging would be a good way to inform a person about bad news.  When asked the open ended question of "Why or why not?" most of the respondents in my sample answered that "If you care about the person you need to be there to console them."  Others said that it's "better to see their honest expression and if they need support."  Finally, some respondents said that it's "better to do it face to face rather than text because it's more personal" Then, I asked the question, "Which of the following would you be most likely to use in order to tell someone about good news?"  48.4% of survey takers said that face to face would be a more appropriate form of communication in telling someone about good news.  In contrast, 19.4% said that text messaging would be the way to communication in this situation.  Finally, 32.3% said phone calls would be much more suitable for this scenario.  When asked "Why or why not?" respondents said that phone calls would be a preferred way of communication because "I'm so excited I might not be able to wait!"  While others said that face to face is more desirable in order "to see their honest expression" and "to share in the excitement." Finally, I asked "Which of the following would you be most likely to use when asking someone to run an errand for you? (a favor, babysit, etc.)"  5.4% of respondents said that they would use face to face communication.  In contrast, 62.4% said that they would just send them a text message.  Lastly, 32.3% said that they would use a phone call as a means of asking for a favor.  From this, we can see that text messaging is the most popular form of communication for casual questions.  When asked "Why or why not?" most respondents said "It's quick and easy." Others said it's the "fastest way to get an answer" and "it's easy, convenient, and casual."