College Credit
Card Debt
Methodology
We constructed a survey that consisted of questions pertaining
to students and their credit card usages. We made 21 survey questions
to ask about the sample’s general information, such as age,
gender, ethnicity, living arrangement, financial assistance, if
they own credit cards or not, credit card usages, and so forth.
Those survey questions were constructed to find out more information
about students’ credit cards habits. We used data from our
survey to find out about the main five factors that influence credit
spending.
Our research questions were based on the five factors we decided
would guide our questionnaire. The five factors were grade level,
gender, card payment; if one pays in full every month or if they
pay only the minimum. Our questions were whether these factors affected
students’ credit card debt. We developed the survey to strategically
find as much information as we could on each of the five factors,
without making the survey too long. Some of our findings, like our
regression chart, were not based on strategic development of the
survey, but were pieced together from different sections of the
survey.
Our data contributed to our estimations by both confirming prior
beliefs, and surprising us. We estimated that freshmen would owe
the most out of the four grade levels we sampled. However, the data
showed us that seniors had the highest average amount owed. Another
surprise was that females, at San Marcos State, owe on average less
than the males we surveyed. One of our most odd findings was that
students that own a Master Card were predicted to owe more than
those that own a Visa, Discovery Card, or American Express. We think
this is due to the fact Master Card is widely accepted, possibly
higher spending limits, and possibly some psychological factors
that maybe people that own a Master Card, feel they are a master
shopper, so they spend like crazy.
Our survey focused primarily on students at CSUSM. We decided
every group member should survey at least fifteen students each,
because we wanted about one hundred completed surveys. We thought
stratified random sampling would be the best option to get the results
we needed. We collected our data at several buildings including
Academic Hall, Kellogg library, dome, and University Hall. After
completing the surveys we met up to compile the data into an Excel
spreadsheet.
To summarize, we did a random stratified survey to collect data
on students’ credit card habits and general information on
the students’ life. The general information such as age, gender,
grade level, living status, financial assistance, how much they
owe to credit card companies, and so forth, was the foundation to
all of our findings.
The limitations to our survey were first, we did not have enough
freshmen and sophomores. We had a total of three freshmen surveyed,
and only nine sophomores. In contrast we had a total of fifty-eight
juniors surveyed. If we had more freshmen and sophomores in our
sample population, we might have had different findings, especially
in the average amount owed by grade level. Also some of the students
we surveyed did not own a credit card. This number was relatively
small, but if we had first screened our sample to find out if they
had a credit first, we would not have had to omit some of our data
from our findings. Lastly, we feel the sample size was slightly
too small to give us enough proof to back up our conclusions.
1
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Executive Summary
2
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Introduction
3
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Methodology
4
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Amount Owed by Grade
5
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Purposes for Credit Card
Usage
6
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Amount Owed by Grade Percentages
7
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Financial Assistance
8
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Male vs. Female
9
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Male vs. Female Purposes
10
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Best Predictors for Amount
Owed
11
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Pay in Full or Pay Minimum
12
> College Student Credit Card Debt - Living Status Correlation
13
> College Student Credit Card Debt - References
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