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E-mail vs.

Letter Experiment
Abstract:
I wanted to conduct this experiment because I wanted to inform people of how they
should go about presenting their information. My motivation for this experiment was my penpals.
I was testing to find out whether people care more about the content if they receive a letter vs.
receive an e-mail. I surveyed people to find suitable test subjects, tested individuals who met
the requirements on the content of an e-mail, tested individuals who met the requirements on
the content of a letter, and graded the tests to find the desired results. I did infact find that
people care more about the content of a letter than they do that of an e-mail and that people
prefer receiving a letter than they do an e-mail.

Introduction:
The reason I conducted this experiment is because I wanted to know whether people
care more about the content when they receive a letter vs. receive an e-mail. I want people to
know how they should go about presenting information to others. My inspiration comes from my
penpals. Lately, I have been writing with penpals a lot and I was wondering which is a better
option when it comes to writing something meaningful to someone. In the creation of this
experiment, I figured, as a general statement, that people who care more about the content of
something are able to remember more of it as they gave more attention to it. When researching
before-hand on this experiment, I did not find any similar experiments that have occurred.
However, I did find on a Scholastic online article that reading physical books, is more engaging
for students and inspires a love of reading as well as an article produced by a college library
stating that students who read physical books are more likely to become active readers whereas
students who read e-books are able to read quicker, but dont absorb as much information as
they would if they were to have read a physical book. Therefore, I had predicted that people
who receive letters are more likely to care about the content than people who receive emails.
Question and Hypothesis:
Does receiving an e-mail vs. receiving a letter effect how much you actually care about
its content? If receiving an e-mail vs. receive a letter effect how much you actually care about
its content, then receiving a letter should allow you to care more about its content because
when reading a letter, you know that someone took their valuable time and effort to create such
a thing.
Methods and Materials:
In order to conduct this experiment, I pre-tested my class period of science by surveying
them on their reading ability, ability to remember, and ability to comprehend content as well as
their preference out of whether they receive an e-mail or a letter. After enough individuals pretested, I looked at the results and selected individuals who gave themselves the highest ratings.
Out of the suitable individuals, I selected 5 people and sent them an e-mail as well as test
questions in which they first read the e-mail, then without referring back to the e-mail answered
questions about the content of the e-mail. I did the same with another 5 individuals who met the
requirements and they read a letter with the same content as the e-mail and answered the same

questions without referring back to the test. Once everyone had completed their tests, I graded
them and organized the data to determine the desired answer.

Results:

Generally, individuals who read the letter scored better on the test than individuals who
read the e-mail. In addition to the test scores that signify that people care more about the
content of a letter than they do about the content of an e-mail, on the survey I found that more
people prefer to receive a letter than they do an e-mail.

Discussion:

This experiment was conducted to discover whether people care more about the content
when receiving a letter vs. receiving an e-mail. Based on my results, I found that people do care
more about the content of a letter than they do the content of an e-mail as well as the fact that
more people would prefer to receive a letter than they would an e-mail. The results of this
experiment are important, but not as important as a life-or-death matter. These results are
important in that it gives people the knowledge of what means of presenting people prefer and
care more about when it comes to expressing information, therefore allowing them to know the
best way to go about present their information to others. I am quite confident in my results
because I not only, conducted an experiment pointing to my results, but I also conducted a
survey that also contributed to them. Improvements that I would include if I were to conduct this
experiment again would be insuring that no one cheats on the test by supervising each testsubject and running more trials.
Bibliography:
- "CQUniversity Library." Books vs Articles vs Websites. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.
- E-books vs. Print. Schoolastic. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2015

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