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What is a blind
taste test?
We
decided that we wanted to have two kinds of surveys. The first would
be run in school and the second online. We brainstormed ideas until
we came up with the one we chose: A Blind Taste Test.
A Blind Taste Test is where people taste something
without seeing what it is. In this case, we wanted to find out what
kind of water [well, town, bottled] kids would like best compared to what
they thought they would like. We tried to control the test so that
it would be equal. These are the steps we took:
-
We got 2 gallons each
of well water [from 2 different wells], town water, and bottled water.
-
We cooled them to the
same temperature so opinions wouldn't be changed because one water was
warmer than another.
-
We covered all labels
so that no one--including team members--could see which water was
which.
-
We set up a table in
the lunchroom for answering home water questions and tasting the
different kinds of water. One team member checked that the form
each was given was filled out right.
-
Once it was filled out,
the person would hand the paper to one of the other two team members
who lined up three cups with a small amount of each kind of water in
them.
-
The person tasted each
and told the team member which one he/she liked best. The team member
marked this on back of the question form.
-
Fifty students were
chosen randomly for the test from third, fourth, fifth, and sixth
grade.
Before the taste test, kids were wondering
where the water came from and did not sound like they would want to try
it. One kid even asked if it was pond scum water. From things
like that, we figured that we might have a hard time getting fifty kids to
do our test. We were surprised when we had tons of requests beyond
the fifty and kids kept coming up to the table who hadn't been chosen at
all. Everyone had a good time.
What were the
results of the blind taste test?
Before
the taste test, kids were wondering where the water came from and did not
sound like they would want to try it. One kid even asked if it was
pond scum water. From things like that, we figured that we might
have a hard time getting fifty kids to do our test. We were
surprised when we had tons of requests beyond the fifty and kids kept
coming up to the table who hadn't been chosen at all. Everyone had a
good time.
The results are below:
- What kind of water do you have in your
house? Out of a choice of town, well, or don't know, 32 of
the 50 children said that they had well water. In our local
area, wells ARE the biggest water supply so these results were not a
surprise. We were a little surprised that 15 kids didn't know
where their water came from. We are hoping this site will help!
- Does your home have a water
filter? 21 said yes, 6 said no, and 23 said they didn't
know. We put this question in because we were curious about how
many people filtered their own water in some way or even knew what a
filter was. We were surprised with the number of kids who knew
that they did have one.
- What kind of water do you like
best? 2 said town, 8 said well, and 38 said bottled.
- Actual taste test preferences: 16
liked town water, 26 liked bottled, and 8 liked well water the best.
It seems that some of the kids who
thought they liked bottled water better, actually liked the town water the
best. We had predicted that bottled water would be the highest, and
it was.
What is an online
survey?
An
online survey is one that is web-based. You answer questions online
and the results are added up and organized so that you can see how others
answered the same questions. Please take our survey!
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