Indiana Food Court Observation Study

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The observational study was conducted at the Indiana State University food court. All of the restaurants, along with the people in the surrounding were observed. The goal of this study is to better understand the environment and situational factors at the Indiana State University food court. The researcher started the study at the peak of lunch to get a better observation of how busy the area is and get the most effective results for the study. The first observation the researcher made was the most visited, busiest restaurants in the food court. The most visited during the lunch hour peak was George’s and Einstein Bros. At the beginning of the observational study both George’s and Einstein Bros had approximately twenty people standing …show more content…

Almost every single person had a cell phone or laptop that they were using. Most people within the food court were on both their laptops and cell phones at the same time. The most interesting observation made was the people who were sitting in crowds talking and they were on an electronic device of some kind. There was occasional conversing of the groups, but the researcher observed the person go back to their electronics after the brief conversation was over. The researcher also observed people with headphones in their ears, which were hooked up to both their laptop or cell phone and talking with there friends. It is amazing to see how disconnected the people were with reality. The people around them were almost nonsexist and the only thing that mattered was their electronic device. The researcher believes this could be detrimental to the college student’s communication skills in the future. If the people are always connected to media then they will lose valuable communication skills needed for most …show more content…

Most sorority sisters and fraternity brothers were sitting together. The way the researcher discovered this was each person had a sorority or fraternity shirt on with the same symbol as others in their group. The researcher was surprised to see that other sororities would not sit with each other, and it was the same for the fraternities. Some of the sorority females would go over and talk with the fraternity males. The different sororities would never mix in and converse with each other, and it was the same for the fraternities. The researcher concluded that there must be some sort of rivalry between the sororities and the fraternities. The researcher was interested in the fact that they did not seem to like each other. Most of the males and females of the fraternities and sororities probably have never met. It is likely that most of these people have never personally talked to each other and there is just a pre-conceived notion to dislike any other fraternity or

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