The Perceptions of American Women about “New Beauty Therapy Services for Kids”

The issue of beauty therapy among American women and sometimes men has been around for a long period that no one can really determine, however, the society has undergone great civilization/modernization and recently beauty salons for young kids have started emerging. These salons offer all sort of beauty therapy services ranging from manicure, pedicure, facials and many other beauty therapy services to young girls, due to the fact that the idea has not been in the market for along time the few salons that offer beauty therapy services to young girls charge a lot of money. Nevertheless, this new trend has received both positive and negative sentiments from the American public. I recently carried out a study to investigate the perceptions of the people towards this new idea. I developed a short questionnaire consisting of five questions and distributed them to ten literate and grown up women with young daughters between the ages of three and eight, within my neighborhood, Brooklyn. The questionnaire comprised of questions that were sensitive to various respondents’ perceptions as they allowed for the choosing of more precise answers. [Russ-Eft, D. F. 1980)] For instance, the second question required them to state whether they supported the idea of kids’ beauty therapy services or not, with answer options ranging from, â€Å"I strongly support, I support, I somewhat support, I strongly oppose, I oppose, I somewhat oppose. † The other three questions were depended on the answer to the first question and the second questions. The quest ions were dispatched through a reliable delivery method (hand delivery) and enough time provided for the answering of the questions, the respondents were also advised not to seek assistance from other people. As expected the survey yielded varying responses, with 80% of the respondents indicating that they are aware that kids beauty therapy services have been introduced in the market, while the rest indicated that they are not aware of the new service. Those who were not aware of the new kids’ beauty therapy services were discontinued from the interview as the answers to the rest of the questions depended on the knowledge of the new kids’ beauty therapy service. Interestingly only a paltry 20% of the survey sample who knew about the new kids beauty therapy services indicated that they â€Å"strongly supported† the new service and a further 20% indicated that they â€Å"somehow supported the new service. † 40% indicated that they â€Å"strongly opposed the new service† and the remaining 20% showed that they â€Å"opposed the new service to kids. † Since the answering of the other three questions of the study was dependent on the answer to question number two only 40% of the respondents went on to answer the remaining questions. This is so because the other three questions were meant to elicit the answers as to what needed to be done and what should not be done about the new beauty therapy service to the kids. It was therefore irrelevant for respondents who did not support the idea to continue answering the other questions as they were bound to give out unreliable answers since in the first place they did not have any interests on the new service. [Wentland, E, J. & Smith, K. W. (1993)] Out of the 40% of the survey sample that proceeded with the rest of questions (by virtue of their support to the new kids’ beauty therapy service) 20% indicated they have once or twice taken their young daughters to the kids beauty therapy salons while the remaining 20% showed they have never done so but they were planning to do so in future. Interestingly 30% agreed that indeed the services are good for their young daughters but they are being overcharged and therefore the charges need to be adjusted. The remaining 10% indicated that the charges were reasonable compared to the good beatification services done to the young kids. On the question of whether some services currently in the kids’ beauty therapy package should be scrapped, they all (100%) agreed that some services needs to be removed from the package as they just did not make sense to young kids. [Wentland, E, J. & Smith, K. W. (1993)] The overall response of the five questions was very reliable as it systematically and precisely gave out information on the perceptions of the respondents. From the results this is visible from the answers to question one through question five. The questions were also arranged in a logical manner to avoid clue giving, those who gave â€Å"NO† as their answer to question one were discontinued from the interview as the study was dependent on the knowledge of the issue being investigated i. e. new beauty therapy services for kids. Further, those who had their answer as â€Å"I strongly oppose/ I oppose/I somewhat oppose† for question two were similarly discontinued from the interview. The remaining questions of the survey were about what needed to be done or not about the new service and therefore it was in order to discontinue those who did not know about the service or support it. The main reason behind this was to avoid false and unreliable answers as those did not support the service did not have any business to comment as to what needs to be done or not about the new service. [Russ-Eft, D. F. (1980)] The simple survey comprising of five-question questionnaire gave out very precise information that could have otherwise not been possible if heavily worded questions were used. This helped the respondents to perceive the questions as not bothersome or requiring much of their time and energy and therefore they gave out correct answers according to their perceptions (or lack of them) on the issue being investigated. Again, the survey sample was small (ten literate women) and the questionnaire comprised of simple questions with instructions written in bold attached on core questions to help extract valid and reliable data. The language used in the questionnaire was simple and unambiguous, further still, the questions were very sensitive in order to extract finer details from the respondents, for instance question number two was very prompting to the respondents as it gave six options for answer. Russ-Eft, D. F. (1980)] In conclusion the questionnaire met all the requirements of the specific criteria of a good measurement i. e. reliability, validity, and sensitivity. It is reliable because that gave out results that could repeatedly be got if the same sample was to be used again; it was valid because it followed a systematic procedure and gave out valid results, and it was sensitive because it allowed respondents a more options for answers. [Russ-Eft, D. F. (1980)]