Survey Report - Entertainment Among Students

Survey Report
To: Mrs. Helen Chmielowiec
From: Maciej Kalecinski
Subject: Entertainment among students
Date: 15th May 2006

Purpose of the report

This report is meant to assess the result of a survey carried out among students of different types of studies and different background. The purpose of this survey was to find out what kind of entertainment students like and especially if all students, that is people mostly about 20 to 26 years old, like the same type of entertainment or they differ from each other in their preferences and if it is connected with the type of their studies. I also wanted to know how much money they spend on i.e. cinema, theatre, concerts etc.
In addition, I wanted to know how participants of the survey feel about the level of entertainment in Poland, whether their attitudes in the matter are rather positive or negative.
The survey was carried out on the group of 20 students from academies of higher education in Częstochowa. Among the Participants were 6 students from Wyższa Szkoła Lingwistyczna, 5 students from Akademia Polonijna, 5 students from Politechnika Częstochowska and 4 students from Akademia im. Jana Długosza. The students were of both sexes, aged between 20 and 24. They attended various faculties and were mostly on the II and I year of their studies. The participants came from different backgrounds and were either single or had a boy- or a girlfriend.
The research was carried out on the corridors of the academies of higher education in Częstochowa and it took about three weeks to gather all the research data and do the summary.

Methodology Used

The research that I did was on a written questionnaire. As the topic of my survey was “Entertainment among Students”, I constructed the questionnaire that was related to students’ type of life and at least tried to match their personalities.
I only analysed what they wrote on their answer sheets and since the survey was in English, so were the answers. Fortunately, only one participant was not able to fill it out in English by herself and needed assistance in answering it.
The questionnaire included various types of questions. I decided to provide many different types of questions in order to not to bore the subjects of my research with the same type of question and not to loose their attention to answering. That is also the reason why it contains only 10 questions. In addition, I wanted to give them freedom in answering and expressing their opinions so I included some open ended questions.
What I did was only explaining them what can be their answer like when I was asked for help, but generally left the participants answer independently, without suggesting anything.

Predictions and Findings

When I decided to do this topic I knew that most of the answers will match the answers I expected. Since I am a student myself, I happen to know what a student has time and what he doesn’t have time for. What I did not know was other students’ preferences and that it why some answers were totally unexpected by me.
As I did suspect, theatre and opera are not very popular forms of entertainment among students. However, I was pleasantly surprised that a quarter of the questioned people actually go to the theatre more than two or three times a year. Unfortunately, five of the twenty participants have never seen an opera in their life. I am afraid that if the survey was carried out on a larger scale that percentage of people would increase.
Majority of students (80 per cent) watch films at least once a month, which is rather natural. However, I expected that cinema would be more popular than TV, but it is not. I presume that this might be caused by the fact that people do not have time and especially money to go to the cinema even once a month or perhaps it is that way only because students watch more films on TV than in cinema, but go to cinemas as well. It is strange to me that I found a person who doesn’t really like watching films and sees only one or two films a year and in addition on TV or by chance. I thought that there is no such person among students and yet this survey made me realise how varied personalities people can have. Another interesting result is the fact that although DVD is a well developing and wide spreading technology it is still less popular medium than cinema. This is indicated by the fact that 70 per cent of the questioned people placed watching films in cinemas above watching them on DVD players.
However, as expected Film Festivals were the least popular option, which is most probably caused by the fact that there are not many festivals like that in Poland and even if there are, then either are they improperly advertised or there are films displayed that only a specific group of audience like.
When gathering the data from the questionnaires I encountered Poland’s biggest problem, which is the legality of the films watched by people. Since most of the students taking part in the survey stated that they watch films mostly and the most often on their computers (85 per cent), all of them stated that some of their films were illegally downloaded from the internet and 90 per cent admitted that most of the films they have seen were illegal. This horrible fact is caused by the fact, that the prices for original DVDs are still quite high for a student. In addition, the price of renting a film from a video library is over a half a cinema ticket price which is much too much, since the films in video libraries are not the most recently displayed ones.
Every participant of the survey has attended at least once at an event like ‘Juwenalia‘ or local festivals like ‘dożynki” etc. However, nearly a half of the questioned that is 45 per cent attends such events only once a few years, probably because of the lack of time.
Most of the subjects of the survey (75 per cent) stated that they have been to a concert more than two times in their life and more than a half when asked about the concerts they have been to, said that they enjoyed those concerts and have no objections about their quality. More than a quarter of the participants wished more professional handling of the sound equipment by the staff and other improvements and only 10 per cent were disappointed with the performances.
When asked about own participation in creating music, playing in a band or acting in theatre only 15 per cent of people admitted to play in a band and only one participant acts in a drama club.
Not even a half, about 40 per cent, expressed their opinion that entertainment in Poland is well developed, varied and audience oriented. Unfortunately, more than a half expressed their dissatisfaction with Polish entertainment. Most complaints were against promoting poor style songs and poor quality of Polish film productions, but also organisation of events like concerts were criticised. Only one participant refused to state his opinion on the topic.

Limitations of the Study

Despite helpfulness of the students that took part in filling out the questionnaire, there were a few (about 5) people who refused to participate in the survey, usually excusing themselves with not knowing English language enough or simply lack of time, because the were in a hurry. Only one person required my assistance in translating the questions and help with answering them. In addition, one person didn’t answer in one question and I had to interpret it as abstention in expressing his opinion.

Conclusions

The survey shows that the most famous type of entertainment among students is watching films. Unfortunately, most of the films watched by students are of illegal source. This information should not however be useful for police, but to video libraries, producents and other distributors and DVD renters to pay attention to the social group of students, who cannot afford to pay that much to rent a film and come up with some discounts.
In addition, the results of the survey indicate that there are more students who are disappointed than those who are satisfied with the level of entertainment in Poland. I recommend paying more attention to organisation of public events and details that make them look and sound more professional.
To sum up, overall view of entertainment in Poland is quite positive, but there are certain areas that need to be worked on. Generally, students don’t have any problem with lack of variability in opportunities of spending time culturally, but perhaps more advertisement and promotion of theatre and opera among young people should be introduced to encourage the further development of polish entertainment.