Research Memo

Hypothesis:

Around the world 21,000 children die every day from poverty. 1 child dies every 4 seconds, 14 children die every minute. 20% of United States child population lives in poverty! (Foundation, 2012, p. 1) I believe that poverty is a Nation issue that should be viewed as a matter of extreme importance. People do not think that poverty is an issue in the United States because they are blind of the truth. How many children in the United States live in poverty? 16.4 million Children live in poor families, and 7.4 million of them children live in extreme poverty. (Poverty, 2004, p. 1)

Context:

My survey was directed to teens and adults. I choice teens and adults because they are more experienced and understand thing that happens in life more than children. They were able to answer the questions openly; knowing something about the topic. The information is reliable because it is their honest opinion and past experiences. My questions are information based, personal experience, and personal believes. I did have to change my survey. I had to add some answer choices for one question, and reword some of the other questions because they were confusing. I will keep some of the old surveys because it has the answers I was looking for when I made the survey.

Results:

	Male	Female
How old are you?	32% was 15 52% was 16 16% was 18	48% was 15 23% was 16 23% was 17
Do you know what poverty is?	100% yes	100% yes
How many kids in the U.S. live in poverty?	25% Did Not Know 75% Did know	55 % Did Not Know 45 % Did Know
How many children in the United States do you think die from poverty each year? (Guess a number	25% Did Not Know 75% Did know	55 % Did Not Know 45 % Did Know
Why do you believe people do not take poverty Seriously?	95% They Never Deal With It 5% I Don't Know	95% They Never Deal With It 5% I Don't Know
Which category do you believe poverty falls in?	80% said Issue 20% said Minor	50% said Issue 50% said Epidemic
Rank these items with 1 the most important.	74% said Food 26% said Phone	64% said Food is Most important 35% Said Phone is most important 1% said Game is most important
Do you think communities should do more to help kids suffering with poverty?	95% Agree 5% Disagree	100% Agree
Do you think government should do more to help kids in poverty?	100% Agree	100% Agree
Is poverty and Issue valued in extreme importance?	59% Agree 41% Disagree	56% Agree 44% Disagree

Data Analysis:

In my surveys I noticed a very surprising trend. I asked “How many kids in the U.S. live in poverty?” I gave some answer choice to choose from. When I looked at my survey data I noticed only 16% of the people who took my survey knew the correct answer to this question. These were people who live in the United States! People who live here walk around every day; are unaware of how many children actually live in poverty. There are 16.4 million children who do not eat at nights, children who are helpless to do anything about their starvation. 84% is a large number of people who do not know how many children do not live in poverty. This shows that people are unaware and that poverty is not viewed as a matter of extreme importance.

I also asked “Rank these items form most importance to least importance with 1 being the most important." I had five items to be ranked phone, game, name brand clothing, I Pods, and food. Also 16% of the people who took my survey did not rank food as the most important thing to them.

This shows me that these people do not know what they have. They take what they got for granted. What if they lived in a house without food for a few days? Would they change their minds? I believe so!

In my survey my final question was “Is poverty and issue valued in extreme importance?"

An astonishing 24% of the people who took my survey said "No" it was not an issue valued in extreme importance. This did not come to much of a surprise to me. This is because most people intend not to see things that do not affect them directly or indirectly as an issue. Only when things are affecting them or someone close to them do the notice something as an issue.

Conclusion:

I believe that poverty is a Nation issue that should be viewed as a matter of extreme importance. People do not think that poverty is an issue in the United States because they are blind of the truth. When I took my survey I intended to prove this to be true. When I looked at my data from the survey's this was proven to be true. Not all people see poverty as a issue because it does not affect them directly or indirectly. The number of people who knew how many children to live in poverty was differently than I expected, I thought that it would have been lower than that. I can conclude that my questions gave me the information that I need and wanted, over all my survey was helpful and proved my hypothesis.

Follow Up:

From here I play to educated and inform people about the effects and issue of poverty. I want to show people who do not think poverty is an issue that they should re think their answer because I does not have to affect you directly to be seen as an issue. Out of my five essential questions i think the one that should be researched next is “What can we do to help those living in poverty?" I did not have to change my research questions because my survey data proved my hypothesis and did not show that there were in flaws in my research questions.