Hello everyone! (In case you are unfamiliar with my research, my abstract is at the top of the page in white.)
Another week has flown by, and, during that time, I have been occupied with finishing my results section and outlining my discussion section. Since I am a little bit ahead in the game, having finished data collection before last week's blog post, I will backtrack and talk about how I analyzed my data.
After collecting 50 participants for my lip gloss blind consumption test and exit survey, I calculated a mismatch score for each participant (how different their preferences were between the blind consumption test and their self-identified preferences in the exit survey). I plotted this against how influenced they were by the natural product movement (a score calculated from how participants answered multiple choice questions about their consumption habits in the exit survey). If my hypothesis that consumers highly influenced by the natural makeup movement are more likely to choose products based off of emotional perceptions between the brands as opposed to sensory distinctions between the products, then participants highly influenced by the natural product movement (scores closer to 20) would have higher mismatch scores than participants less influenced by the natural product movement.
However, after plotting the graph (see below) and seeing the lack of trend (I had an R-squared value of 0.01639, very far from 1, which would indicate a linear trend), I learned that all participants tended to have relatively high mismatch scores (4-8), regardless of whether or not they were influenced by the natural product movement. Thus, I was able to conclude that many makeup consumers make decisions based on emotional perceptions of brands and not actual sensed quality differences.
However, one interesting thing that I noticed was that the few participants with very high natural product movement influence scores had low mismatch scores (0-2), while those highly uninfluenced by the natural product movement (negative values) tended to have high mismatch scores. The conclusion I drew from this was that consumers very staunchly for natural products may actually prefer the sensory feel of them and be able to differentiate natural makeup from unnatural makeup, even under blind consumption conditions.
I also decided to look at the overall favorite makeup brand, the one that scored the highest in the blind consumption test, in order to see if consumers tended to favor natural products over the unnatural ones, which would indicate a higher quality in natural makeup. Surprisingly, the unnatural drugstore brand L'oreal won out, with bareMinerals (natural high-end) coming in second, Burt's Bees in third (natural drugstore), and MAC last (unnatural high-end). Therefore, since L'oreal won, it cannot be concluded that natural makeup is inherently preferred among makeup consumers for its sensory qualities.
As for my game plan for the rest of the week, I am meeting with Ms. Haag Tuesday morning to discuss the outline for my discussion, and Tuesday through Thursday afternoon I will try to bust out a first draft. Thursday afternoon through Sunday, I am going to Golden, Colorado to visit Colorado School of Mines, participate in prospective student events, and interview for a scholarship (fingers crossed)! When I have downtime, I will try to edit the discussion and the full paper.
Until next time, have a great week and happy analyzing your results!
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Audrey -- hearing you talk about your research is so rewarding. Even the way you're blogging about the results is so succinct and clear -- you
ReplyDeleteclearly convey the relationship between the different pairings of data and draw conclusions from said data. I'm, as per usual, impressed!
I think getting a head start on the results will be really valuable, as your discussion will need to heavily discuss the limitations as well as the potential explanations for why the data points to the conclusions it does.
Audrey,
ReplyDeleteHonestly, your research is amazing, and you seem to know exactly what you are doing. Given that your data analysis section os essentially done, I think really the only thing you kind of have to think about (and I'm sure you already have) is how you are going to arrange all of your results within your results section, and then how you intend to parallel that in your discussion section.
I think it's awesome that you basically have everything done, and I'm sure that your research paper will be great!
Akash
AUDREYYYYYYY!!! This is the first time I have read your blog and its just awesome how you organized everything. Its really easy to understand what your research is all about from your handy abstract text widget and the clear way you spoke about your results and data analysis provided me with an understanding of where your discussion section and results sections were headed. I think you might want to start thinking about how else you may want to represent your data besides the Word/Excel Linear Graph. The graph shows exactly what you want it to, however, it might not hurt to use another method to depict other trends you discussed more clearly. Besides that, I know you know exactly what you are doing and I can not wait to read your blog week in and week out to see what you are up to!
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Ved Narayan
150 words
Hey Audrey! This my first time on your blog and I really love how everything is really clear and organized. The abstract at the top gave me a clear and concise understanding of what you are doing, and it looks like you know exactly what to do with the results analysis. Good job on being ahead of the game (as always)! So yeah, everything is really clear and amazing. Good luck synthesizing your results and discussion and stuff with the rest of your paper! Also have fun in Colorado!
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