The "What is Beauty?" Survey
We conducted a survey to try to see trends in people's definitions of beauty. This survey was created very carefully. We took quite a bit of time trying to come up with questions that would not influence people to answer in the ways that we felt they should be answered. We had to pay close attention to the terms we were using as well as the tone we used in each question. We scattered the survey about using Facebook. We thought that having people outside Lyman Briggs would give us more diverse answers. The results we got are not conclusive. However, there are some very interesting trends.
The Questions:
1. What is your gender?
2. What is you ethnicity?
3. What is your age?
4. When you hear the word "beautiful" what do you first think of?
5. What characteristics, in your opinion, make a woman most beautiful?
6. Please pick the number that you find most beautiful in the picture
7. What ethnicity do you find most beautiful
8. Is the ethnicity you chose the ethnicity you are?
9. Please rank the following characteristics from most beautiful (1) to least beautiful(10)
1. What is your gender?
2. What is you ethnicity?
3. What is your age?
4. When you hear the word "beautiful" what do you first think of?
5. What characteristics, in your opinion, make a woman most beautiful?
6. Please pick the number that you find most beautiful in the picture
7. What ethnicity do you find most beautiful
8. Is the ethnicity you chose the ethnicity you are?
9. Please rank the following characteristics from most beautiful (1) to least beautiful(10)
All Inclusive Trends...
- 90 people took the survey in total
- 59 Females and 31 Males
- 1 Asian or Pacific Islander, 19 Indian or Middle Eastern, 3 Black or African American, 2 Hispanic or Latino, and 69 White/Caucasian
- The majority of the survey takers were between 18 and 24 years of age
- 61.11% of people thought of women first
- The characteristics that were found to be most beautiful: Brunette (64.44%), Blue eyes (37.78%), Medium skin tone (72.22%), and Athletic (48.89%) and Hourglass (47.78%) silhouettes
- Picture 1 (47.78%) and Picture 2 (37.78%) were seen as the most beautiful to people
- 55.56% of people said that the ethnicity that they were was the ethnicity that they found most beautiful where, 44.44% of people said they were not the same ethnicity that they found most attractive
- When asked about characteristics that were most beautiful, Intelligence and Confidence were the top answers
Some Interesting Trends...
When the survey was filtered between gender, there was not a whole lot of difference from the answers that included everyone. However, we decided to filter the survey by ethnicity just to see what would happen. We first filtered the survey to show only Indian or Middle Eastern answers. We found that the answers to the questions followed very closely until question 8 where 68.42% of them said that their own ethnicity is the one they found most beautiful. This group also picked Picture 2 when asked which picture they found most beautiful. When the survey was filtered to only include Whites/Caucasians, 53.62% of people said that their own ethnicity is what they found most beautiful. This group chose Picture 1 when asked which picture they found most beautiful. There were not enough survey takers in the other ethnicity groups to filter out different answers. These two groups agreed that Intelligence and Confidence were the most beautiful characteristics.
When the survey was filtered between gender, there was not a whole lot of difference from the answers that included everyone. However, we decided to filter the survey by ethnicity just to see what would happen. We first filtered the survey to show only Indian or Middle Eastern answers. We found that the answers to the questions followed very closely until question 8 where 68.42% of them said that their own ethnicity is the one they found most beautiful. This group also picked Picture 2 when asked which picture they found most beautiful. When the survey was filtered to only include Whites/Caucasians, 53.62% of people said that their own ethnicity is what they found most beautiful. This group chose Picture 1 when asked which picture they found most beautiful. There were not enough survey takers in the other ethnicity groups to filter out different answers. These two groups agreed that Intelligence and Confidence were the most beautiful characteristics.
Conclusion
Though this survey was not conclusive, we were still able to learn something about a couple of cultures that we all have looked into. It was very interesting to see the similar trends as well as the different ones. Due to the fact that the survey site we used had restrictions on the number of questions allowed, we were not able to separate out the characteristics in question 5. We also would have liked to ask a few more follow up questions but, again, we were restricted. We were able to get some help from some of Dr. Montgomery's colleagues and we very must appreciated the feedback received.
Though this survey was not conclusive, we were still able to learn something about a couple of cultures that we all have looked into. It was very interesting to see the similar trends as well as the different ones. Due to the fact that the survey site we used had restrictions on the number of questions allowed, we were not able to separate out the characteristics in question 5. We also would have liked to ask a few more follow up questions but, again, we were restricted. We were able to get some help from some of Dr. Montgomery's colleagues and we very must appreciated the feedback received.