Progress on Essay 4

71 people have taken my survey with fairly consistent results that generally support my social theory, though there are several key exceptions.  I will explore these in detail within my essay.  Here is another link to my survey if anyone wants to take it.  I will also elaborate on how this social theory applies to the college student demographic in particular.  I can't discuss my plans in too great of detail so as not to skew results if someone were to take my survey after reading this post.  Needless to say, I have made certain observations based on the results of my survey that were somewhat surprising and will be analyzed using peer-reviewed sources.

Survey Initial Results

27 people have completed my survey thus far.  The survey can be found here.

The only case where more people leave scraps on their plate than completely clear it occurs when eating in dining halls.  This supports the phenomenon of "Tragedy of the Commons," where a common resource is exploited or abused because there is no economic incentive to do otherwise.  Several people support this with statements claiming to "try new things" and finding out they didn't like them, whereas the survey-takers are assumed to purchase only what they are guaranteed to like using more rigid forms of currency with limited quantities of food.  This is also supported with the admission that most people would alter their dining hall behavior if there were some form of penalty for not clearing one's plate.

Status Report

I am just about finished with my survey and will create it on surveymonkey.com and post it to Facebook on several pages later today.  I will post initial results once I have them.