The Accessibility of In-person Relationships and Its Impact on Secondary School Students

How does the walkability of cities affect the relationships between students aged 11-18?

Researcher

Ava Young

Class of 2023

Problem Statement

There is a problem with the current state of creating real life relationships in cities with limited walkability. Despite the modernization of agriculture, we see many new developments being built around vehicle transportation. This problem has negatively affected a younger generation of people who aren’t forming in person relationships as often or as effectively. A possible cause of this being that these kids aren’t able to provide transportation themselves and aren’t being given the resources of public transportation or safe walkways and as a result aren’t going outside and forming good social bonds. Perhaps a study that investigates how secondary schoolers feel about their personal relationships when they live in varying levels of walkable cities could determine which is more beneficial to kid’s friendships.

Significance and Value of Study

Determining the relationship between the walkability of cities and the quality of the human relationships that form in those environments can influence where people choose to reside for their own benefit.

Hypothesis and Assumptions

I hypothesise that in more walkable cities, secondary school students are going to form more in person relationships with people living in their area.

Proposed Method of Study

My proposed method is Casual-Comparative Research. I will send a survey to Secondary School Students collecting their thoughts on their interpersonal relationships and seeing how that information compares to the walkability of their city.

Definitions and Variables

Walkability is a measure of the built environment and how friendly it is to walk/access given amenities either by foot or city funded transportation.

Method of Inquiry

Ultimately, I wanted to find, with my research, people's interpretation of their surroundings regarding their living environment as well as their opinions on the friendships that they have. In order to do this, I concluded that conducting quantitative descriptive research in the form of a survey was the best way to go about gathering information.

Results and Findings

My conclusion will be drawn based on only the evidence that I have, which is that there is no direct correlation or trend when it comes to walkability and teenage relationships. The data shows that no matter the walkability score, most people had relatively similar friendship scores. This refutes my original hypothesis which stated that those with higher walkability scores would in turn have better friendship scores. As shown in the graph, almost everyone, excluding outliers, that filled out my survey had generally the same friendship score, falling in between a score of 18-24.

Implications

By my evidence, those who are looking to raise teenagers in some sort of suburban area, would not need to factor in how living there could affect their teenager socially. Meaning that parents would only need to account for walkability’s other impacts on teenage life, such as physical health. These results do not only affect those raising teenagers but the teenagers themselves. My data shows that teenagers, no matter where they live walkability-wise, should be able to form and maintain adequate friendships.

Next Steps

One of the changes I would make in order to fine-tune my research would be instead of creating a Likert scale that the survey taker fills out to describe the area they live in I would collect the actual city the person lived in. By doing this I could analyze the walkability of the city that one lives in scientifically using components such as distance between city blocks and the number of amenities in an area, in order to compose my own walkability score rather than letting someone interpret the walkability by their own perception.

Most Important Success

As of right now, my research shows that there is no correlation between the walkability of the city a secondary schooler lives in and the friendships that they have in their lives. This means that those who may be raising children would not need to necessarily take walkability into account when deciding where they want to raise their children based solely on a social basis.

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