Unusual Cravings that Bears Have-Humans

Questionnaire Coursework

Title: Unusual Cravings that Bears Have-Humans

Introduction of question: This research seeks to find out whether it is normal for bears to desire human meat when they are in hunger. After a long period without eating in the summer, big bear, the researcher was resting on the beach waiting for winter to set in. the scarcity of food gave him an intense hunger, one like he had never experienced before. In an attempt to keep his mind off the hunger pangs, bear kept himself busy with thoughts about hunger ironically. These thoughts led him to wonder about the hunger he experiences and the extent to which it can reach. At this instance, he noticed that the tourists he saw on the beach looked like they could be edible and even satisfy his hunger. Perturbed by these thoughts, the bear also began to wonder whether this is an issue that is exclusive to him or it was something common among the bears who like him were travelling Northward. The more he thought about this issue, the more curious and confused he got and this prompted him to consult with other bears. However his initial attempts to find answers flopped as his approaches were rebuffed by the other bears. These challenges motivated bear to

Aims of this research

The key aim of this research is find out if other bears, like big bear desire to devour the humans they see in their vicinity during times of intense hunger.

Another aim is to find out the intensity of hunger that these bears experience for them to get such a desire.

The third aim is to check if this issue of bears wanting to eat meat is affected by factors other than hunger that is being experienced.

The final aim is to find out the extent to which a bear’s hunger can reach, if it has a limit that is.

Objectives of this study

The overall objective of the study is to find out if there exists a relationship between a bear’s hunger and its desire to eat human beings.

Specific objectives are the smaller objectives that will be used to achieve the overall objective.

The first specific objective is to establish the physical differences that exist between the bears in the area.

The second objective is to find out if these differences have a bearing on how the bear experiences hunger.

The third specific objective is to find out if there is a level of hunger that can motivate a bear to want to eat people. If this kind of hunger exists, the research will also need to establish if it is widespread across the different types of bears that are around.

Discussion

The reasons for the different questions that are being asked in this research will be discussed in this section. The initial questions that bear came up with are the following:

a) Do bears get hungry on the beach?
b) Do bears want to eat the tourists?
c) Do bears find it easy to feed once the sea freezes over?

The first question, “Do bears get hungry on the beach?” is meant to put the hunger in proper context rather than just ask the obvious question about bears getting hungry which is rather conventional. Also, asking about the beach is meant to narrow down the scope of places where people can get hungry. Contextualising the hunger in question increases the likelihood of receiving appropriate responses from other bears since it is possible that they. Also, specifying that the hunger is being felt by bears automatically disqualifies other animals from participating in the study and skewing the results (Sudman and Bass, 1982).

The second question “Do bears want to eat tourists?” is meant to ascertain the extent to which bears are driven by their hunger. Conventionally, hungry bears will eat some fish or eat berries in their environment. For this reason, the question has to be specific about bears having thoughts of eating human beings rather than simply asking the bears if they desire to eat, a question that would be misleading and vague since it is possible for individual bears to have developed unique tastes.

The third question “Do bears find it easy to feed once the sea freezes over” seeks to find out if a change in the season has an effect on the level hunger that bears experience. This is meant to gauge if the freezing of the ocean makes it difficult for bears to forage for food and in the process increases the level of desperation of the bear. Like the first and second question, the third one seeks to contextualize the hunger that bears experience. This is because while hunger is common and normal, the threat of not fining anything to eat removes the normal element from the equation, as the animal gets into survival mode.

These questions were initially closed ended and assigned the option of either responding in the affirmative or the negative. This was meant to find out if there is any similarity between the respondent’s answers and what the bear had been experiencing. Big bear’s experience takes the place of an hypothesis since he seeks to find out if t=other bears also get so hungry to the extent of contemplating making a meal out of humans who are on sight.

Amendments to the Questions

Silver-fox then suggested to big bear that the questions needed to be amended so as to capture meaningful data that would assist the bear in solving the mystery about an appetite for humans. A simple yes or no answer leaves the researcher with a very vague conclusion since it does not take into account the other differences that may come into play in the level of hunger and choice of food that a bear has.

As a result, bear came up with the following questions:

What sex are you?
How old are you?
How many cubs are you supporting?
Describe your place in the Social Hierarchy

The first question “What sex are you?” aims to find out if the bear being interviewed is male or female. This is because a bear’s sex may have bearing on the hunger it has as well as the type of food. Since big bear is a male, he wants to know if the thing he experienced only happened to males or is one that female bears too can go through.

The second question in this set is “How old are you” and it aims to establish the age of the respondent so that the bear doing the research can note down the age differences of the different bears he will interview. This too will act as a guide to establishing if the bear’s hunger and the things it desires to eat at these different stages is affected by how old the bear is. Such information may help this big bear to know if the strange experience is just a phase that bears go through at a point in their lives.

The third question reads “How many cubs are you supporting?” and this one mostly goes to bears that have young cubs under their care. The number of cubs has a direct effect on the amount of food that is demanded in the bear’s so to say ‘household.’ Having more cubs to support means that the mother has to find more food to feed them and also herself eat more due to the need to breastfeed her cubs. A higher number therefore possibly suggests the increased likelihood of hunger.

The final question in this set was “Describe your place in the social hierarchy.” The importance of this question is to get data on the perceived socials standing of the different respondents to be interviewed in big bear’s research. By asking this one to the different bears, big bear intends to know if there is any connection between a bear’s social standing and his or her choice of food.

However, silver-fox determined to help big bear still felt that the questions in the state they were still had the potential to further complicate the matter rather than make it simple. This is a problem that is common with open ended questions since without any guidance, a respondent could indeed provide answers that are of little or no help to the research that is on-going (Griffith et al, 1990). It is always important to at times constrain the mind of the respondent in such a manner that will make him or her think in the direction that is valuable to the research. An example is the question of age. The obvious answer that is expected by big bear is the age in numerical form, but the respondents’ lack of this awareness can make them respond in a way that does more of confuse than add information. This is because there are many ways of expressing age including saying “as old as the hills.”

To further assist the bear, fox provided a response schedule that was meant to constrain the respondents’’ reactions into a form that is easily interpreted by the researcher at the end of the exercise. The response schedule is a collective term for the different options that are available for each question. Though there are multiple questions, the respondents can only select one option (Oppenheim, 1992).

Big bear then reset the questions as follows

What sex are you?

Male Female

How old are you?

1-4 years 5-9 years 10+ years don’t know

How many cubs are you presently supporting?

None One Two More than 2

How would you describe your place in the Social Hierarchy?

Near the Bottom in the Middle towards the Top Not Sure

In the first question, there are only two possible answers and this saves bear the burden of having to choose between meaningful answers to the gender question as it sometimes happens in surveys where open ended questions get funny answers.

In the matter of age, silver fix illustrated the importance of a schedule such as the one provided by big bear. Since there is a wide range of ages that the respondents have, it became necessary to group the possible ages into three categories and also cater for those who do not know their age. Despite their inability to express their age, those who fit into the “don’t know” category are still worthy respondents since the rest of the information they will provide is still of great importance to the research.

The question about cubs being supported could still have been clarified since bear has not specified the kind of support he means. In research it is important to avoid ambiguity as much as possible. Since the term support could mean many things such as moral support or even support in the sense of rooting for thus resulting in misleading responses. Perhaps bear could have clarified this one by further explaining the kind of support he was talking about. However, the schedule provided was spot on since the options given are quite reasonable.

The final question about social hierarchy of the respondents could also have done with a bit more clarity. Position can only be relevant and meaningful if it is given relative to something else. This question does not indicate which social hierarchy the researcher is talking about. From the story it is clear that there are several animal species that live in the same place. As a result, it is possible for all bears to say that they are at the top because they are looking at the social hierarchy in the context of all animals while in real sense, big bear seeks to find out the position of the respondent in the current social hierarchy of the same species (Trochim, 2006).

The options that have been given for this question are however properly straight forward and easy to understand and possibly respond to.

Theories that emerge in this research

In social research, there are two main approaches that are used to explain the logical path or paths that are followed by a researcher (Babbie, 2012). These are inductive and deductive reasoning and both are important tools to this work because they first of all enable the researcher to distinguish flukes from actually existent patterns and more importantly, they make it easier for the researcher to make sense of social phenomena that they are studying. In our case, the big bear is the researcher and the phenomena being investigated is hunger and the effects it has on the thoughts of a bear. Another benefit of theory is that it directs the researcher to issues that are of importance and interest to the subject area. In big bear’s case, the key issue is hunger and other issues that come into play are the physiological and psychological differences that bears have. These differences are gender and social hierarchy respectively (Trochim, 2006).

If a theory is developed inductively, the pattern of research moves from specific to general while deductive approaches move from general to specific with the aid of a hypothesis that can either be accepted or rejected at the end. In the case of bear, the initial idea resulted from an experience that he himself had. After this, he sought to find out if other bears have a similar experience. This is a motion form specific to general thus making bid bear’s thoughts to fall into the category of inductive (Hall, 2012).

In the inductive approach, a social scientist goes through a process of identifying social phenomena in the area of study then identifies any patterns that may be relevant to the study. After this process, the researcher is in a position to make general conclusions that affect the entire population that is being studied. However since in many instances it is impossible to conduct research on the entire population, researchers have to conduct the research on a subset of the population also known as a sample. The procedure of selecting this group is known as sampling. There are many ways in which sampling can take place (Robson, 2002).

Bear’s steps mirror this process virtually to the letter. By wondering if the rest of the bear population feels like him, he is laying the foundation for the inductive approach. The process of selecting 20 bears that he did is known as random sampling and questions about age, sex, number of cubs supported and social hierarchy position are meant to establish if there is any pattern in existence.

This survey falls into the category of a focus group and data will be collected through a researcher administered questionnaire. It is a focus group because the issue at hand is being analysed in the context of bears. Because of the need to get accurate responses, the questionnaire will be administered by the researcher in case of a need for explanations (Moser and Kalton, 1993)

The analysis of the data collected in this research will be carried out through the pattern matching approach. This way, the different parameters that are used to distinguish the respondent bears well be correlated against their expressions of hunger in its intensity. This way, if there is a clear pattern between hunger experienced and the age, sex or social hierarchy, it will be observed by the researcher. Since the data includes a qualitative variable as the main area of interest, the most appropriate method of doing this correlation will be Pearson’s product moment (Neuman, 2005). With Pearson’s product moment, it will be possible to establish the existence of a relationship between hunger, the dependent variable and the other factors like age, sex, number of cubs supported and social hierarchy which are independent variables (Marying, 2000).

Appendices

Table of the respondents and their responses to the questionnaire

Name	ID No.	Sex	Age	Cubs	Social	Hunger	Think	Meal	Salivate	Stomach
Beartrice	1	2	1	2	1	9	8	9	8	8
Yogi	2	1	3	0	3	.	5	.	6	6
Etc.

Table 1. a table of the respondents and their responses to the questionnaire

The Questionnaire to be used in this research

Hello, I am Big Bear and I am investigating the opinions held by bears living on this beach. You have been chosen to be part of a random sample. I should be very grateful if you would answer the questions below by circling the answer that best represents your condition, or opinion. Please circle one answer only for each question. Do feel free to add comments if the answers on the schedule are too restrictive

First I would like you to tell me just a little about yourself.

1) What sex are you? Male Female

2) How old are you?1-4 years 5-9 years 10+ years Don’t Know

3) How many cubs are you presently supporting?

None One Two More than 2

4) How would you describe your place in the Social Hierarchy?

Near the Bottom In the Middle Towards the Top Not Sure

Now I would like you to tell me about your present state of Hunger

5) At present I am:-

Not at all Hungry Famished

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

6) I think about my hunger:-

Never All the time

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

7) The thought of a good meal:-

Never Crosses my Mind Obsesses me

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

8) I find myself Salivating:-

Never Constantly

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

9) My stomach feels:-

Comfortably Full Empty

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Thanks a lot for taking your time to participate in this survey, your responses will go a long way in this research. If you may need to know the findings, kindly contact me in one month’s time.

References

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