Levy, Eric

In 2012, the amount of reported concussions doubled in the past ten years to 3.8 million. Concussions and head-related injuries caused by contact sports can lead to long term traumatic brain injuries. With the increasing presence of these injuries, the National Football League and the National Hockey League have implemented extensive concussion protocols. This questions the underlying uncertainty of the future of contact sports. Our project addresses the question of hypothetically, if you had children, knowing what we know today about concussions/head related injuries, would you allow them to play contact sports. The decision to allow your child to play contact sports was motivated by the gender and age gap. The different levels of education had a statistically significant impact on the knowledge surrounding the current professional football and hockey concussion protocols.

Climate change is defined as the change of the global climate patterns which is caused by natural occurrences and human activities facilitated by the increased use of fossil fuels. Climate change is a prominent issue today, with people having conflicting viewpoints about it. Government intervention on the subject of climate change is widely debated. To understand the differing perspectives on climate change, we developed an online survey consisting of 12 questions. We gathered 500 responses from people all over the United States. Overall, our findings showed that people believe in climate change. However, there is a statistically significant difference on the views of climate change based on people’s party affiliation. Republicans were the highest group of all the political parties surveyed to say that the government should not have a concern for climate change. This survey depicts the conventional view that Republicans hold on the issue of climate change.

Although the United States seems to be progressing
more than ever in both culture and science, more
people are getting cancer than in prior history. Not
only are there more cancer patients, but the majority
of cancer patients in the U.S. rely on traditional treatments
such as Chemotherapy and Radiation. In eastern
societies, not only are there fewer cases overall,
but they tend to rely on eastern medicine treatments
such as herbs and different foods as treatment
options. Even though billions of dollars are being
raised to aid in cancer research in the U.S. alone, it
is not often you hear about new advancements that
change the landscape. This project explores people’s
attitudes towards cancer and its cure based on
demographics such as age.

The economic future of our country is uncertain after
the most recent presidential election, and many people
are wondering if they will have enough money
to retire. There are lots of people, even proficient
economists who were stunned by the economy’s
positive trend over the past few months. While there
is a strong growth in our country’s economy, there is
no clear way to see what the future has in store. The
purpose of my research is to see how people are
preparing financially towards their future. My goal
is to see if people started saving for retirement, and
how worried they are about the future. I am interested
to see how much people saved so far. What
I found is that many people did start to put money
away for retirement, but they are worried about the
future regardless of how much they have saved so
far.

Professional sports is a large industry that reaches
millions of Americans today. Those Americans are
called fans- the ones that support the teams, fill the
seats, and cheer them on from home. Occasionally
these professional sports teams decide to relocate
to another city, state, etc. Relocation has become
increasingly prevalent in the past few seasons. This
puts the dedicated fans in a difficult situation in
which they can remain loyal to the city or the specific
team itself. In order to analyze how someone would
react to their favorite professional sports team being
relocated, we developed a survey to addresses the
underlying question of would your favorite team
remain your favorite team even if they relocated.
Our results found that the decision to remain a fan or
switch to another team depends on gender and the
level of education.

Financial literacy is the backbone of the American financial
system. As cash begins to be used less, credit
is playing a larger role in our day to day activities
such as purchasing a home, car, or online shopping.
This change can create trouble for those who do not
have knowledge about their credit and finances. To
understand the financial education of Americans, we
developed an online survey about financial literacy
and collected responses from over 200 people. Our
findings show that there is a statistically significant
difference of financial literacy based on factors such
as income level and age group.

The Cuban Embargo has restricted economic, cultural and diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba for 53 years. On December 17th, 2014, President Obama made a televised-speech on “normalizing relationship with Cuba,” instead of continuing an “outdated approach [that] has failed to advance our interests.” This study will examine and analyze the attitudes of Hispanics living in the United States’ towards the lifting of the Cuban Embargo. We are interested on the Hispanic population because they represent one of the largest and fastest-growing minority groups in the United States. We conducted telephone and online surveys of 500 Hispanics around the country. Our findings indicate that Hispanics have statistically significant different perspectives on lifting the Embargo, expanding trade and reestablishing diplomatic relations depending on their age, gender and other socio-demographic factors.

Does the Mode of data collection affect respondent’s behavior? Specifically, do telephone interviews or online surveys lead to extremity of responses? Many may assume that there is no difference in survey responses conducted online or over the phone. However, evidence supports that respondents give more extreme responses over the telephone than an online survey. We would like to test if what has been found in previous research holds for the Hispanic population, since it is the fastest growing ethnic minority in the United States; therefore they are impacting the culture, the marketplace, and politics within the country. We conducted our analysis by surveying 500 Hispanics nationwide using telephone interviews and online surveys in order to compare the difference in responses between the two modes of data collection. Our analysis supports that there a statistically significant difference in respondents behavior between online surveys and telephone interviews.

Historically, Hispanics have been the ethnic minority, in the United States, with the highest rate of adults without health care insurance. Before the Affordable Care Act passed in 2013, 36 percent of working-age Hispanics were uninsured in the United States. After the bill was passed, the percent of uninsured Hispanics in the population declined to 23 percent in June 2014. This study examines the impact of the Affordable Care Act implementation on the Hispanic population. We conducted a survey of 500 Hispanics nationwide to test the hypothesis on the dissimilarity in health care coverage and affordability among Hispanics males and females. Our results revealed a significant disparity in health care insurance coverage and affordability between Hispanic males and females. The dissimilarity in coverage and affordability between genders has continued after the passing of the Affordable Care Act, a point often overlooked.