PS300 Unit 9 Survey Results Analysis Example

Near Misses and Frequent Phone Users: A PS300 Unit 9 Survey Results Analysis

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS300: Research Methods I

Unit 9 Survey Results Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The respondents and every figure are composite; the statistical sources cited are real.

Sample

The survey received 152 responses over three weeks; six were incomplete and were removed, leaving 146. Placing the near-miss questions late in the survey, as recommended for sensitive items, may have helped keep the completion rate high (Dillman et al., 2014). Respondents ranged from 18 to over 65, with 58 percent under 35, and 71 percent reported walking downtown at least three days a week. Because respondents found the survey through neighborhood online posts and cafe flyers, the sample is a convenience sample and may overrepresent younger, frequent downtown walkers.

Descriptive Results

Phone use while crossing was common. Sixty-two respondents, 42 percent, reported reading, texting or using apps while crossing a street "often" or "almost every time" in the past seven days; they are called frequent users here. The rest, 84, reported doing so "never," "rarely" or "sometimes."

Fifty respondents, 34 percent, reported at least one near miss in the past 30 days, defined as stopping suddenly or a vehicle braking or swerving while they were walking and using a phone.

Risk perception was high across the sample. Asked whether using a phone while crossing makes them less safe, 81 percent agreed or strongly agreed, including 74 percent of frequent users.

Three in four frequent users agreed the habit was unsafe and did it anyway.

Testing the Association

The key question was whether frequent users were more likely to report near misses. Among frequent users, 32 of 62, or 51.6 percent, reported a near miss; among others, 18 of 84, or 21.4 percent. The chi-square test indicated that a gap this large would rarely arise by chance alone, χ²(1, N = 146) = 14.43, p < .001. The phi coefficient, a measure of effect size for a two-by-two table, was .31, which Cohen (1988) would describe as a medium effect.

Interpretation

Frequent phone use while crossing was associated with more self-reported near misses. Two cautions apply. First, the design cannot show cause: people who use phones while crossing may also walk in busier areas or cross more often, which would raise their near-miss risk regardless of the phone. Second, both variables are self-reported, so a respondent who recalls near misses vividly might also overestimate how often they use a phone, or the reverse.

The high level of agreement that phone use is unsafe, even among frequent users, suggests a gap between knowledge and behavior. That gap matters for prevention: campaigns that only inform people of the risk may not change behavior that people already know is risky.

Comparison With the Observation

The observation found 29 percent of pedestrians using phones at the curb; 42 percent of survey respondents reported frequent use while crossing. The difference may reflect the convenience sample, different definitions, an observation that captured one moment rather than a week, or both. Cozby and Bates (2020) note that combining methods is valuable precisely because each has different sources of error, and here the two agree on the direction of the finding while differing on its size.

References

Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Cozby, P. C., & Bates, S. C. (2020). Methods in behavioral research (14th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Dillman, D. A., Smyth, J. D., & Christian, L. M. (2014). Internet, phone, mail, and mixed-mode surveys: The tailored design method (4th ed.). Wiley.