Kai Slemenda

The Work Of Art

April 19, 2016
Benjamin Craig
Final Project Research Article
Introduction:
Based on the demographics of students attending Portland State
University, a school with a strong reputation of Liberal Arts degrees and
programs, the data involved in students level of art exposure is partially
reflective of the universitys community. Recognition of Portlands social
movements in relation to art proposed a questioning of how an early
exposure to art relates to ones desire of creating social change. The data
was collected through an online survey sent to PSU students of all ages and
majors. Understanding this questions results through data analysis was
sought out hypothesizing that students with a strong background in art
would more likely have a political and artistic interest in social change. To
recognize arts relation to social injustice in Portland shows insight to the way
movements can be artistically operated. Similarly, this data collection
provides a limited but clear view of various opinions regarding what is
constituted as a social movement.
Participants:
Of our 71 PSU student participants there was an average age of 21
years. The youngest participants was 18 and the oldest was 28. 68 of these
students chose to give their identified race. (M=20.77, SD=2.732) A majority

(54 people) identified as Caucasian. Additionally, 4 identified as Asian, 4 as

Hispanic, 1 as Native Alaskan/Pacific Islander, and 1 as Native American. 2
preferred not to identify and 2 chose other. There was a more profound
statistical difference of variables involved in race rather than age and gender
present on Graph 1.
Graph 2:

Graph 1:

Data:

Chi-Squared Test of Independence

A chi-square test of independence was used to evaluate the relationship between individuals
exposure to art and their desire to create social change. (See figure 1). We found a significant
relationship between parental exposure to art and interest in art related to social change, 2(1,
N=61) =4.21, p =.04. Essentially, those who were less likely to be socially interested in art
(79.5%) were without parental exposure than those with parental exposure (20.5%). However, a
factor to take note of is our sample size being too small to have enough explanatory power.
Independent Sample t-test

An independent-samples t-test was conducted to evaluate the hypothesis that earlier exposure to
art would create social change desire. Contrary to this hypothesis, those who were socially
interested in art (M = 3.36, SD = 2.105) gave insignificantly larger data than those uninterested
socially in art. (M = 4.15, SD = 1.899), t(61) =-1.5, p = .139. Graph 3 displays this result.

Graph 3:

Discussion:
Of the 71 Portland State student participants, there was significant and
insignificant data collected with some limitations. Noted on the Chi-Squared
Test of Independence (Figure 1), there was an insignificant relationship to
parental exposure to art and ones social interest in art. Although groups
varied largely in being uninterested socially in art, those who were socially
interested didnt show great difference between being parentally exposed or
unexposed. Most likely responsible for this outcome is our small sample size.
Our data is also representative of a cross-sectional study, taking data from
one area of population without any growth or development over time. Future
research on art exposures relationship to social justice may be more
beneficial (from a larger sample size) in analyzing the data of art students
and social science students. Inquiring the other possible reasons for an
interest in social studies among students through surveyed questioning
would be worth collecting as well.