Risk Behavior on the Subway Platform - Research Paper Example

? Risk Behaviour on the Subway Platform Introduction Humans are known to be risk takers. It is often that a human being will be seen engaging in a risky behaviour, which can badly harm their health or even life. Males have for a long time been seen as more likely to engage in risky human behaviour as compared to females. Studies regarding this issue have not dealt with it exhaustively. In this regard, there is a need to look at the ways in which humans engage in risky behaviour. Needless to say, there are likely to be differences in the way different groups from different demographics engage in risky behaviour. Gender is definitely one of them. Apart from that, age is also another variance that is likely to determine how an individual engages in risky behaviour (Stanton, 2013). Scholars who have studied this issue have found that females are more likely to engage in risky behaviour. However, the psychological underpinnings which lead to this gender disparity with regard to risky human behaviour have not been well established. Most social scientists still seek to understand why females are less likely to engage in risky behaviour such as alcohol consumption, smoking, gambling etc. In this study however, these issues are not focus and the study only intends to investigate whether males are more likely to engage in risky behaviour than women are. It also intends to investigate whether age differences are also factors which affect risky behaviour. This study will be carried out in a subway to look at the way is which different people of different ages and different genders are likely to engage in risky behaviour. The data so collected will be analysed to identify any trends and tendencies within the data collected for specific gender or age-related tendencies with regard to risky human behaviour. This is important in understanding how age or gender affects the behaviour if individuals. Many scholars have tried to look at the issue of risky human behaviour and how it relates to gender and age. In this study, two hypothesises will be used to be the guiding mantle. The first is about gender and risky behaviour and it postulates that females are more likely to engage in risky human behaviour in subways than are males. The second hypothesis is about the age factors and it postulates that younger people are more likely to engage in risky human behaviour in the subways as compared to the older people. These hypotheses are based on earlier studies which revealed that women and older people are less likely to engage in risky human behaviour. For instance, according to Harris, Jenkins and Dale (2006) in their article titled “Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men?”, women are less likely to engage in risky behaviour such as in gambling, recreation and health. Another study carried out by Fazio (2010) also indicated that pedestrians are likely to engage in risky behaviour in public transport infrastructure even in cases where they don’t have a reason to. This raises the question of why humans are obsessed with indulging in risky behaviour. It is therefore necessary to be able to investigate this behaviour and also pin more elaborate issues such as how age and gender factors in. In this study which used 657 participants, they found that women were less likely to engage in risky behaviour across a number of social circumstances. However, this was not the hallmark of this study but the other issues which the study investigated. For instance, the study revealed that although women were less likely to engage in risky human behaviour, they were also more likely to get negative consequences from engaging in risky behaviour. The study also reported that the severity of the consequences were more likely to be higher in females than in men while at the same time the females were less likely to enjoy the experience of engaging in the risky behaviour (Harris, Jenkins and Dale, 48-63). This study may be an indication of why women are less likely to engage in risky behaviour. Engaging in risky behaviour for an individual is always about what the individual can get from the experiences and the cost to pay. If for women the enjoyment is less and the consequences are higher, this may explain why they may not want to engage in risky behaviour. The same applies to the current study about risky human behaviour in subways. If females are more likely to have more severe consequences for engaging in risky behaviour in subways while at the same time get the least enjoyment from the experience, they will most likely shy away from it. Risky behaviour considered in this study include stepping into the restricted zone with two feet, jogging or running on platform and engaging in horseplay on the platform (pushing, fighting). These three behaviours are more likely to harm women given their general lack of physical strength and therefore are less likely to engage in them. The same case applies for older people (over fifty years of age) since they also have less physical strength and agility as compared to younger people. Because of their relative lack of physical strength compared to young males, older people and females of all ages are less likely to participate in these risky behaviours because their lack of strength would mean that they are more likely to have more serious negative consequences than young males. Method Participants The participants were selected randomly in the subway. Every third individual was observed as long as he or she met the following conditions; If there was no train in the station If the individual could be judged to be between the ages of 18 and 35 or between the ages of 50 and seventy The main factors being measured were any risky behaviour which the participants could engage in the subway. If the participant being observed indulged in such risky behaviour as stepping into the restricted area with both feet, this was recorded as risky behaviour and was entered as such. Other risky behaviour which the observers were looking for included engaging in forceful movements such as elbowing, pushing and fighting. The study also considered such behaviours as jogging to be part of risky behaviour. The age group and the gender of the individual were recorded alongside the kind of behaviour displayed by the individual. This was geared towards attaching risky behaviour to age and gender to determine how these two factors affected the behaviour. Procedure The procedure for the study was done as follows; Students went to New York City subways. The students who were doing the observations stood at a distance to guarantee that their actions were not so obvious to the participants as to affect the behaviour of the participants. Each student was to observe four participants and the participants did not know that they were being observed. For an observation process to be considered successful and the data recorded, the participant must have met the threshold as described above. The participants to be recorded were chosen by way of picking the third person to enter the subway platform after the process of observation began. The following data about each participant was collected; Age estimate of the participant (young or old) Gender of the participant Whether or not he or she engaged in any risky behaviour as recorded above Results At the end of the study, over 48 participants had been observed. Of this, over thirty percent were young people, those estimated to be about 18-35 years of age. This higher number of young people may be explained by the natural demographics in which case young people are more in the population. Young people are also more likely to be at the train subway as opposed to older men who are likely to have alternative means of transport. Of the 48 participants, 27 were females while the rest were males. The data indicated that a larger number of the males were more likely to engage in risky behaviour. Over fifty percent of the males who were observed engaged in at least one of three risk behaviours as described in the method section. For the females, only less than ten percent were observed to engage in risky behaviour. For the older people, only about five percent seemed to engage in risky behaviour and the only risky behaviour they engaged in was the least risky such as stepping into the restricted zone. They did not engage in the riskier behaviour such as horseplay and jogging. Discussion The risk behaviour pattern observed among the participants seem to confirm that that there is an age and well as gender factor related to the risky behaviour of individuals. There was a big difference between the different genders in the way they engaged in risky behaviour. Apart from more males engaging in risky behaviour than their female counterparts, they also indicated a tendency to engage in riskier behaviour compared to the females. For those female participants who engaged in risky behaviour, they only engaged in the less risky behaviour which would probably produce the least negative consequences if it came to that. Males were however seen to engage more in riskier behaviour such as horseplay and jogging in the subway platform. The same discrepancy also seemed to have appeared between the younger and older participants as well. These results confirm what Harris, Jenkins and Dale (2006) indicated in their study with regard to how gender affects risky taking. In this study, some of the issues investigated by Harris, Jenkins and Dale (2006) can be seen to be at work. To begin with, it is eminent that the kinds of risks in this case are the kinds of risk which are more likely to lead to more negative consequences to women and older people than to young males. For instance a female who engages in horseplay in the subway platform is more likely to get harmed than a male. The same case applies to older people who are more likely to be affected with negative consequences if they engage in risky behaviour. Limitations of the study There are a number of limitations with regard to this study. The first one is the number of participants who were used which was just too small to provide a cohort large enough to study the subject. This may need to be addressed in the future in order to come up with a more reliable size of the cohort. The second issue which limited the study was the fact that the ages of the participants were guessed because the participants were never asked about their personal data such as age. Age estimation can be a tricky issue such some people may appear much older than they actually are while some people can appear much younger than they actually are. Even though there was a big gap placed between the two age groups, this cannot solve the issue completely. As a result, there is a need to identify how this can be looked in order to come up with more reliable data. For future studies There are a number of issues which were not covered in this particular study and which must be investigated. For instance, future studies may need to investigate how females and older people look at risk taking. Future studies should explore issues such as rationality such as; are older people more rational than the younger ones? Are females more rational than males? Are there any emotional and psychological explanations as to why females are more risk averse than men? These questions can be answered only by redesigning the study and looking for other variables. For instance it is necessary to understand the background of the individuals in order to understand how past experiences affect one’s risk taking behaviour. This would require not just observing an unaware participant but actually involving the participant in the study and knowing quite more. This would reveal whether past experiences are important in determining the way an individual takes risks. References Fazio, J. (2010). Case Study of Pedestrian Risk Behavior and Survival Analysis. Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies 8, 2-15. Harris, C. J. (2006). Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why do Women Take Fewer Risks than Men? Judgment and Decision Making, 1 (1), 48-63. . Stanton, N. (2013). Advances in Human Aspects of Road and Rail Transportation Advances in human factors and ergonomics series. New York City, NY: CRC Press. Read More