Cory Murray

CED 404
Survey Analysis
December 4, 2015

Delta Gamma Future Expectations Survey Results

Introduction:
Audience: The members of Delta Gamma Sorority.
This survey is conducted to obtain information that will help
understand womens attitudes toward the level of success they hope to
achieve in the future and also how success is defined by those surveyed. In
college, there are many variations of goals set by students. Some may wish
to just gain an education, while others are attending college for social
aspects. Others plant to put their education to work in a professional setting.
This is true for men as well as women but traditionally women have placed
their family life as a priority over their education. This prioritizing is from
cultural norms of the lives of women throughout the world but in the 21st
century, times are changing and women are beginning to choose to put their
professional life first. Through this survey, I plan to see if there is any relation
between years of schooling and want to succeed professionally by
postponing having a family. While answering this, I hope to separate answers
by major to see if major has any relation to future choices of wanting a
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family or professional life.

I hope by analyzing and organizing the survey result, it will give insight
to the women surveyed of how their peers see themselves in their upcoming
years and to see if their terms of success are similar to other women around
them.

Methods:
For this survey, I randomly selected 40 women within Delta Gamma
sorority at Penn State sorority . I chose this sorority due to the abundant
access I have to the sorority from being a member. The members range from
17 to 22 years old and form freshman to senior years. Participants of the
survey were randomized and were granted anonymity. I chose to distribute
the survey on November 22nd, a day of monthly Delta Gamma meeting where
attendance is required of chapter members.
From the 40 members selected, the goal distribution was to be 25% or
10 members, were freshmen in college, 25% sophomores, 25% juniors, 25%
seniors. I gave the survey to every other person until ten survey were given
out for year of college. This was purposefully distributed to make sure to get
an equal numbers of surveys between years of college. This will be to see if
there is a difference in answers from the number of years spent in college.
Women were chosen for this study since women are traditionally the family
caretakers.

I purposely picked this sorority because there is a GPA requirement to

be considered for a sorority. Specifically to Delta Gamma, you must have a
3.3 GPA to be a member. There are also a variety of majors within Delta
Gamma. This way there will a broad variety of interests represented. My
hope with varying so many aspects of the group asked would be that it would
therefor be more applicable than to just the group of women I surveyed.
My materials included 45 pieces of paper to print the surveys. I printed
a couple extra surveys in case there was a mistake and also some to hold to
have a point of reference for questions. I brought a box of 25 pens and
handed them out sporadically throughout the group for those who did not
have writing material with them. I also had a friend help pass out the surveys
then collect them at the end. I distributed them at our monthly meeting
where all 170 members are required to attend unless excused.
While handing out the surveys, I explained to fill out the questions to
the best to their abilities and raise their hand. Each survey took around 52
minutes and I only received one question. I stood at the back door and
received the surveys as they left the meeting. Some did not turn the survey
back to be, so I had a final tally of 32 surveys.
In the survey, I asked them to rate their answers from strongly
disagree to strongly agree. This way, there was multiple options to best fit
their immediate response to each question. I begin with instructions that
inform them to answer to the best of their ability

Analysis:
I hoped to receive 10 surveys back from each year studying in college:
freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. After collection, I had 32 surveys
completed. Eight from were freshman, 9 were from sophomores, 9 were from
juniors, and 6 were from seniors. There were only 6 completed senior forms
because as a senior you arent required to attended monthly meeting, so less
seniors were present on this particular Sunday, November 22nd. This gives a
response rate of 80%. For those who did not return the survey, it was
primarily due to them leaving the meeting early or forgetting to return them.
Graph

1.

Of the 32 participants, 9 different Penn State colleges were

represented: Communication, Smeal College of Business, Agriculture,
Education, Liberal Arts, Undecided, Health and Human Development (HHD),
Engineering, Eberly College of Science. The range of colleges represented in
encouraging that there are many work loads and interests represented.

Graph 2.

The largest College represented was the Smeal College of Business

with 9 participants. The second larges was the College of Communication
with 7 participants. The colleges with the smallest numbers represented was
the Eberly College of Science and the College of Agriculture.
After the name and date of the participant was asked, the first set of
questions were grouped according to the theme, The
Search. The first question asked was if the
participants want to grow up having a job. For this

94%

Job

PLAN TO WORK
AFTER COLLEGE

question, the overwhelming majority, 94%

answered Agree or Strongly Agree. This question
was strategically places at the begging to gage the interests of Delta Gamma
to work in their future.
The second question was to gage the feelings of the participants had
for looking for a job while still in college. This questions results were a little
more split, 20 of the 32 said they do plan to look, 8 said they were unsure or

Do Not Know and 4 said they Disagree that they will look for a job while
in college.
Graph 3. Confidence of having a job after college

Of those who plan to look for a job, most were confident they would have it
set up before graduation.
The reason for those who may not being looking to have a job after
college could be due to those who plan to continue their education, for
example grad school, after undergrad. Question 4 asked this, of which 10
said they do plan to extend their education, 10 were insure, and 17 said they
do not wish to get a higher education after their undergraduate degree.
The second section was to measure attitudes of Future Job
Expectations. The first question attempted to assess if being professionally
successful is important to the participants. For this question, 75% of women
questioned responded by saying they think professional success is important
in their lives. The next questioned asked to see how confident women are

that they will be come a boss or CEO in their professional career. The
confidence in this question was significantly lower than the attitude towards

75% THINK BEING

other job specific questions. 23 out of 32
PROFESSIONALLY
SUCCESSFUL IS IMPORTANT answered that they Didnt Know while only
4 of out of 32 answered that they agree that

BUT ONLY 28% THINK THEY HAVE

AN EQUAL CHANCE AS A MAN TO
HAVE SUCCESS

they will likely be, or they want to be, a

boss or CEO. There was also little

confidence seen in the results of the next question You feel women are just
as likely as men to become a boss. 16 out of 32 said they disagree that
women are as likely as men, 50%, while only 9 out of 32 said they agree this
is opportunity equality, 28%.
Interestingly, when asked if having a family is considered having a job
93.75% of women, 30 of 32, replied they either agree or highly agree with
the statement.
The third section of interest was Future Family Expectations. This
section hoped to measure the prioritizing for family vs. a professional career.
To begin, 28 out of 32 participants, 87.5%, said they plan to have children at
some point in their life. One was unsure, and 3 said they likely would not
have any children in their lifetime.

Table 1. Future Family Expectations

Questions
You plan on having children

Strongly
Strongly
Agree/
Don't
Disagree/Dis
Agree
Know
agree
87.50%
3%
9%
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You would postpone having a family

in order to progress professionally
You would leave your job in order to
have a family
You would prefer to have both a
family and a job
You would return to work after having
children

40.60%

25%

34%

40.60%

28%

59%

90.60%

0%

9%

62.50%

28%

9%

Then members were asked if they would be willing to postpone having

a family in order to success professionally. 11 of 32, 34%, said they
disagreed. This means that 34% said they would not be willing to postpone
having a family over professional success. This can either be taken as they
will try to achieve both or that 34% say they would choose having children
over having a successful job. 40% said they would still be willing to postpone
having a family for job success. This resulted in the small majority saying
they would put off having children in order to personally succeed. 8 of the 32
were still unsure or didnt know how to respond to this question.
The majority, 90%, responded they would rather not have to choose
and would prefer to have both a family and a successful career. An even
larger proportion would return to work if they were to leave to have children,
62%, 28% say they were unsure if they would return and only 9% said they
would likely not return to work.
Table 2. Comparing Answers of Freshman vs. Seniors

Year
Freshman

Those willing to postpone

a family to succeed
professionally
Disagree

Would leave your job in order

to have a family
Disagree

1
Freshman
2
Freshman
3
Freshman
4
Freshman
5
Freshman
6
Freshman
7
Freshman
8
Senior 1
Senior 2
Senior 3
Senior 4
Senior 5
Senior 6

Disagree

Agree

Disagree

Agree

Disagree

Agree

Disagree

Don't Know

Agree

Strongly Agree

Disagree

Strongly Agree

Disagree
Agree
Dont Know
Agree
Agree
Agree
Disagree

Agree
Disagree
Agree
Disagree
Disagree
Disagree
Disagree

In the above chart, the difference between freshman and seniors years and
their future ambitions are measured. While all but 1 Freshman said that they
Disagree that they would postpone having a family to succeed professionally,
4 of 6 Seniors said they Agree that they would be willing to make that trade
off. To reinforce this, 6 of 8 Freshman Agree or Strongly Agree that they
would leave their job to have a family while all but 1 senior said they would
be willing to.
The majority of freshman also replied that they disagree that they are
likely to have a job post college while all 6 seniors and all but two juniors said
they were confident thy would have a job. A majority of freshman also stated
they plan on having children, consider having children a full time job, and

would likely return to work after having children. In comparison, a majority of

seniors replied that they plan to be a CEO or boss in the future, that women
are just as likely as men to become a boss, and also that they would
postpone having children to succeed professionally.

Implications:
After analyzing the results several conclusions can be made about the
results. All women in Delta Gamma sorority are required a 3.3 GPA to be
eligible to be a member, making all members dedicated students in school.
To some level, they must all care about school in order to maintain that GPA.
Most, (87.5%) of the 32 respondents, want a family in the future also.
Traditionally there is an expectation of women to give up their professional
lives in order to be at home with the children. During and post World War II
though, there has been a change in stigma of womens role and in to the
workforce and at home. Now it is much more common for women to go to
work and stay there even while having children. Now, women in America for
the most part have a choice of staying at home with the children or two
work. Sometimes there is a need to priorities what is most important to a
woman as well, sometimes having to either sacrifice having a family for a job
or having to sacrifice a job to have a family.
My analysis of the data showed ambition was strong among most
women surveyed. The majority wants to work when they are older and also
have an interest in having a family. Seniors tended to be more confident in

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the value of their education more that freshman. This can be seen through
how willing freshman are to leave work in order to have a family but how
seniors would rather be professionally sound. This could be due to a seniors
confidence in their ability to multitask and have both a family and a job. As a
freshman or even sophomore, you are just beginning to put effort and time
into your schoolwork and may not appreciate an education as much as
upperclassman.
Other trends were noticeable such that STEM colleges (science,
technology, engineering, and math) are also more likely to stay at work
rather than leave to have a family. This could be due to the amount of effort t
hat goes into their studying and the demand that those jobs hold in the
future.
Most women want to see a future of being able to balance both family
and a good job though and would rather not have to prioritize one over the
other perhaps because they go hand in hand with each other.
An interesting follow up analysis to this survey could be to measure
freshmans change in attitude of their education and future as they progress
through freshman year. At the beginning of their freshman year they may not
be confident and overwhelmed by the culture shock and work amounts. But
perhaps there would be a followable trend of freshmans attitudes toward
school as they progress and become more comfortable. By the end of their
freshman year perhaps their answers to the same survey would be
noticeably different than at the beginning of the year.

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Appendix
Intro
Methods
Analysis
Graph 1
Graph 2
Graph 3
Table 1
Table 2
Implications
Survey

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