Research Questions: What are people’s attitudes towards physician-assisted suicide?
Participants: I will survey the general population. I want to find out if average people know about Physician-assisted suicide, as well as their attitudes towards this treatment option. In asking the general population, more specifically college students, assuming they are all of voting age they can help inspire a change to the current regulation. Average people as participants are relevant since their survey answers will either show that a contributing factor to opposition for assisted suicide stems from a lack of understanding of the subject or only having a limited skewed knowledge on the topic in general.
Purpose: I want to obtain information to see if …show more content…
It is hard to definitively conclude that there is an overwhelmingly positive or negative reaction to physician-assisted suicide. Out of the 20 people that I surveyed, 75% of them knew what physician-assisted suicide was. When I asked for the first word that came to mind when thinking of physician-assisted suicide I was surprised at the amount of reassuring words I received. Answers were ranging from compassion, relief, and peace, to death being the most common reoccurring negative interpretation. One of the main observations that I made was people who rated their religious status of a 4 or higher were less accepting to physician-assisted suicide. However, on the other hand, people who have known someone personally who was terminally ill showed an increasingly overwhelming support for the medical choice. Question 5 of my survey conveyed the most decisive results. 90% of people surveyed believed that a terminally ill patient’s mental state should be taken into account. This question also resulted in the most confusion when answered, which I will discuss in my limitations. The second portion of my survey illustrated that the majority of people tend to strongly agree with the fact that a patient should have the right to choose if they want to continue their lives, however, this same support was not depicted when I asked if this should be a part of federal legislation. Most individuals would follow up with …show more content…
It is hard to get an accurate representation of the population in only surveying 20 individuals. With a larger sample size, the data I collected would have had less variability, and I might be able to see a clearer pattern in my results. Expanding my target population to a larger group of individuals outside of CSUN students would have also impacted my results. With a time constraint on the assignment those who I did survey needed a level of convenience. If I had more time to survey, I would have extended my population to a larger audience. Older people or individuals who have already graduated college might have a different perspective than students have on physician-assisted suicide. There is also confounding and lurking variables in my survey. Depending on the individual I asked they could have felt pressure from me to respond to the question in the way they believe I wanted. For instance, the circumstance came where I asked someone who knew my position on physician-assisted suicide. That individual might have been more hesitant to share their true opinions afraid I would think negatively of them based on their responses if they didn’t match that of my own. One of the flaws in my experiment were the questions I asked. I found that after several of my participants read Question 5 they would have follow-up questions, which leads me to believe that I was not specific and clear enough. If I had to
Participants: I will survey the general population. I want to find out if average people know about Physician-assisted suicide, as well as their attitudes towards this treatment option. In asking the general population, more specifically college students, assuming they are all of voting age they can help inspire a change to the current regulation. Average people as participants are relevant since their survey answers will either show that a contributing factor to opposition for assisted suicide stems from a lack of understanding of the subject or only having a limited skewed knowledge on the topic in general.
Purpose: I want to obtain information to see if …show more content…
It is hard to definitively conclude that there is an overwhelmingly positive or negative reaction to physician-assisted suicide. Out of the 20 people that I surveyed, 75% of them knew what physician-assisted suicide was. When I asked for the first word that came to mind when thinking of physician-assisted suicide I was surprised at the amount of reassuring words I received. Answers were ranging from compassion, relief, and peace, to death being the most common reoccurring negative interpretation. One of the main observations that I made was people who rated their religious status of a 4 or higher were less accepting to physician-assisted suicide. However, on the other hand, people who have known someone personally who was terminally ill showed an increasingly overwhelming support for the medical choice. Question 5 of my survey conveyed the most decisive results. 90% of people surveyed believed that a terminally ill patient’s mental state should be taken into account. This question also resulted in the most confusion when answered, which I will discuss in my limitations. The second portion of my survey illustrated that the majority of people tend to strongly agree with the fact that a patient should have the right to choose if they want to continue their lives, however, this same support was not depicted when I asked if this should be a part of federal legislation. Most individuals would follow up with …show more content…
It is hard to get an accurate representation of the population in only surveying 20 individuals. With a larger sample size, the data I collected would have had less variability, and I might be able to see a clearer pattern in my results. Expanding my target population to a larger group of individuals outside of CSUN students would have also impacted my results. With a time constraint on the assignment those who I did survey needed a level of convenience. If I had more time to survey, I would have extended my population to a larger audience. Older people or individuals who have already graduated college might have a different perspective than students have on physician-assisted suicide. There is also confounding and lurking variables in my survey. Depending on the individual I asked they could have felt pressure from me to respond to the question in the way they believe I wanted. For instance, the circumstance came where I asked someone who knew my position on physician-assisted suicide. That individual might have been more hesitant to share their true opinions afraid I would think negatively of them based on their responses if they didn’t match that of my own. One of the flaws in my experiment were the questions I asked. I found that after several of my participants read Question 5 they would have follow-up questions, which leads me to believe that I was not specific and clear enough. If I had to