Ashlee Andress
Author: Ashlee Andress | Major: Apparel Merchandizing and Product Development | Semester: Fall 2022
During the Fall 2022 semester, I worked with my honors mentor, Dr. Lance Cheramie, to assemble a survey and recruitment materials for my project. My intention was to put together a questionnaire to assess generation Z’s perceptions of sustainability within the apparel industry. As someone who is looking to go into the apparel industry, I am very concerned with how my actions and decisions affect the environment and community around me. This project assesses how my peers and other individuals from my generation perceive the issues with our environment and how clothing affects that. This information can help individuals and corporations better educate and market sustainable products to the upcoming generation, and better meet their consumer demands.
Narrowing down my topic was very difficult, and finding a direction was stressful for me a few semesters ago, but with the help of my honors mentor and my committee members, things have run very smoothly. They have been interested in my research alongside me, which is encouraging, as well as offering me advice and constructive criticism. I am very thankful for all their feedback and assistance.
At the start of the fall semester, my honors mentor and I first established a timeline for our questionnaire. We wanted to have our instrumentation distributed by the end of the fall semester. In order to put together a survey that would adequately assess perceptions of sustainability, we looked at surveys that had already been reviewed and distributed to increase the validity of ours. After reading through several studies about perceptions and behaviors, we found one that was similar to what we were wanting. We adapted our questionnaire from the existing survey, gearing it more towards apparel.
In order to submit to the IRB, we went to Ms. Isabel Whitehead for assistance. She graciously taught us how to fill out an IRB protocol form. We had also decided that we were going to distribute our questionnaire by email to all students in the Bumpers college, so we prepared an initial recruitment email and reminder email to be sent out. My mentor and I were both very thankful for her time, as the application seemed very tedious and daunting. Although it was tedious, it proved to be straightforward once we tackled the task. Ms. Whitehead helped us submit all our materials, and the next step was to wait patiently for the IRB to approve our protocol.
A few weeks later, all our materials were approved. Dr. Cheramie and I met to transfer our survey to Qualtrics so that we could effectively collect data. We looked at previous students’ Qualtrics surveys as examples to help us input all our information and data. The program proved to not be very user friendly, but we eventually formatted everything how we wanted it. We then sent our approved recruitment email and survey link to our contact in the Bumpers college, where it was emailed out to all Bumpers students. The survey was left open for a month, with two reminder emails sent during the duration it was open. This was a good stopping point for us this semester, and we left for winter break.
When we return to campus next semester, we will award gift cards to ten randomly selected individuals that completed our survey and chose to leave their contact information. We will then begin to assess and analyze our data so that I can finish my project.