Reflection

I have learned that being a researcher can be very tough. Your data can get messed up by non-serious survey takers or it can be hard to find a good resource on your topic. The part that went really well for me was the survey and my data. I felt like I got reliable data and people were serious when they answered my question. The hard part for me was finding a good resource. I had a pretty specific topic so that's why it was hard to find a good resource. I finally found just what I was looking for and it turned out good though. Next time what I would do differently is survey a different audience. I would survey adults to find out more about teens in the 70s. I might have changed my research question to be more about teens nowadays rather than teens in the 1970s.

This research has affected my understanding of how much people change over the years. While researching teens in the 1970s I found that they were very different than teens are now and I think pretty much every decade there's a huge change in teens. I think it's just human nature to be different and change over the years. Despite all this I also learned that the teenage experience is very similar between the 70s and now, it's just represented in different ways.

Recommendations

A new research question for me would be Why are kids not that interested in their parents teenage years? On the opposite side of that another question could be What makes some teens interested in their parents teenage years? I need to look more deeply into if teens in the 1970s had more responsibilities and if they spent more time with their families. A good follow-up project would be to interview people that were teenagers during that time about those questions that didn't get answered. People who are around 40 or 50 years old would be a good population to survey. That would actually be better than 9th graders for my topic.

Something that needs to change is, teenagers need to become more interested in teenagers in the past. Maybe at school we could have a class dedicated to learning about teenagers in the past decades such as the 60s or 70s.

Conclusion

From my survey data I have concluded that most people are either only a little bit interested or not interested at all. Only a small amount of people are truly really interested. My research shows that teens in the 70s are very different than teens now. They had very different clothing styles. Television was becoming popular around this time too so they watched a lot of TV which is a similarity between our two generations. My sources have answered my research questions by telling what teens did during their leisure time and what their clothing styles were. My data shows that kids nowadays aren't really interested in the past. They are more concerned with the present and the future. Some people are still interested in the past though.

Survey Data

The total number of survey takers was 96. They were all 14 or 15 year old 9th graders. 32 of the survey takers were male, which is 33% and 64 were female, which is 67%. 40 of the respondents were black, 40 were white, 2 were Asian, 2 were Latino, 7 were mixed, and 5 were other. 16 people who answered my question were very interested their parents teenage years. Another 16 people were just interested, 35 were somewhat interested, and 29 were not interested.

Summary of Source

Radio and television were a big part of teens lives in the 1970s. Many teens listened to the top 40 songs and rock and roll stations on the radio. Teens watched popular TV shows such as M*A*S*H, Starsky and Hutch, Happy Days, and Hawaii Five-O. Teens used a lot of drugs and alcohol in the 70s. They mainly drank beer and used marijuana. Some slang words for marijuana were alfalfa, doobage, and tweed. A lot of teens wore blue jeans in the 70s. The hippie look stuck around from the 60s too. Mini dresses and skirts were popular among teen girls. Jogging became a very popular leisure activity for teens in the 1970s. Exercise, healthy eating, and staying in shape became the new craze for teens. People also got very interested in eastern martial arts such as karate and judo. The 70s were known as the disco era with huge afros, disco balls, dance floors, and the dance moves that were popularized by the 70s. Middle school also began in the 70s. Before that decade school was divided into 6 grades of elementary school and 6 grades of high school. People decided there should be a transition period in between elementary and high school.

Rollin, Lucy. Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades: A Reference Guide. New York: Greenwood Press, 1999. Print.

Research Questions

-What did teens in the 1970s do for fun?
-Did teens have more responsibilities in the 1970s?
-How close were teens in the 1970s to their families?
-What were the clothing styles of teens in the 1970s?

Investigation Topic and Goals

My blog is about teenagers lives in the 1970s. I choose this topic because it really interests me. It interests me because it has to do with the past. I also like this topic because my dad was a teenager during this time period and I would like to know the circumstances he grew up in when he was a teenager. I already know that life was harder for teens in the 1970s because parents were typically more strict back then and they needed more help around the house but I want to know more details and additional information. I hope to learn more about their personal lives. I want to if they hung out with their friends and what they did for fun. I hope to learn more about the daily life of teenagers in the 1970s. I also want to learn about how different his teenage years were than mine are now. It will be interesting to see how much things have changed since then.