Consumption Behavior in Families: A Statistical Survey on Phone Consumption

Abstract

This study examines whether an association exists between the phone brand used by high school students and the phone brands used by their parents. Data were collected through in-person interviews with 22 high school students aged 16–18 from the San Francisco Bay Area. A chi-square test of independence was conducted to analyze the relationship between student phone brand (Apple vs. non-Apple) and parent phone brand (Apple vs. non-Apple). The analysis yielded a chi-square value of χ² = 0.05 with 1 degree of freedom and a p-value of 0.82. Because the p-value exceeded the conventional significance threshold of 0.05, the null hypothesis was not rejected, indicating no statistically significant association between the variables in this sample. Although many students reported using the same phone brand as at least one parent, this pattern did not differ significantly from what would be expected by chance. These findings suggest that, within this sample, parental phone brand is not a statistically significant predictor of a student’s phone brand, highlighting the need for further research with larger and more diverse samples.