Ph.D Survey (University Life)

I was at York lanes in the food court eating my lunch when a guy approached me. He quietly asked me something I couldn’t hear. So I asked him to repeat it loudly. Then he said "could you please fill out a survey", he continued "it’s a survey for my thesis. I am a psychology Ph.D. student". So I said, "ok, just let me finish my lunch and come back in 10 minutes". When he came back he gave me the survey. It was a survey about an earthquake that hit Busan (capital of South Korea), a city with a population of 3.8 million people. The earthquake killed 155,000 people and 310,000 suffered injuries. The city was not built with seismic standards.

After reading this short story the questions started. There were about 30 questions, all related to how I feel about the story. There were questions like, "how did you feel when you read the story?", "would you be willing to help these people?", "do you think that the earthquake was Busan people’s own fault?", etc. At the end of the survey I read that by filling this out my name was being entered in a raffle for $20 dollars. Not much if you ask me but we are all students and we have to help each other with this kind of assignment. Interestingly enough, the survey also asked, "if you win, would you like to donate the money to an organization helping with disastrous relief?". Obviously I marked yes. I could actually pick the organization among a list of 5 names. I chose Doctors without Borders.

After finishing the survey, the student and I began to talk. His name was Zdravko Marjanovic. He told me he is investigating the factors that influence helping behavior. The purpose of this survey was to examine whether individual judgements of responsibility influence people’s experiences of anger, sympathy and willingness to help others.

It was a good experience for me because I could help him. I really like to help people. I told him the survey was a win-win experience. I could use it for my University life. The vocabulary was not difficult.

Here is the website for Doctors Without Borders:

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/