"Excuse Me, Do You Have the Time?" Responses Recorded Dressed as a "Tomboy" as Opposed to a "Young Lady"

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective is to prove when I ask people at a shopping center for the time, I think more people will respond to me differently dressed up as a "tomboy" as opposed to a "young lady." Methods/Materials For my experiment, I chose to video the responses of people as I asked my question to help document my data. I chose a "tomboy" outfit and a "young lady" outfit. My mom ran the video camera as I collected the responses from people. For the two days of collecting information, I chose the same time of day to ask people for the time while dressed in the different outfits. A popular shopping center was chosen for my project. The duration of time spent asking a total of 50 people my question was 45 minutes each day. Results People were willing to help me and put forth an extra effort to answer me, while dressed as a "young lady". People actually stopped, made eye contact with me, and pleasantly answered my question. Two people offered me a ride and the use of their cell phone. As people were driving by, I received alot of smiles and one man who did not have his watch with him earlier, drove by me and told me the time. While dressed as a "tomboy" however, people would not make eye contact with me and they would answer me as they were walking away from me. I recieved five "no responses" dressed as a "tomboy". My graph indicates the numbers of people in the catagories titled: "Helpful", "Extremely Helpful", "Asked a Question", "No Response", "Impatient Response" and "No Eye Contact". Conclusions/Discussion I thought that I would be treated differently dressed as a "tomboy" vs. a "young lady", and I was correct! I realize and appreciate the genuine concern shown by people who wanted to help me when I was dressed as a "young lady". In contrast, I felt uncomfortable and insecure when people were impatient and seemed to look down on me, dressed as a "tomboy". What a difference clothes make! In conclusion, I learned an important life lesson. People should not judge or treat others by the way they look on the outside! but, unfortunately, people do. I was the same girl asking a question, but only wearing different clothes. Because of this project, I am now more aware of how to respond to others, regardless what they look like and hopefully you will be enlightened too!

Awards (1)

• Category Award

Competition history

• CSEF 2004 Social Sciences (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1705

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• CSEF Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2004 project