REPORT ON RISKS

By Dimfna Delbeke and Sara Vansevenant

Table of contents

Executive summary................................................................................................ 1
Introduction............................................................................................................ 2
Findings.................................................................................................................. 3
Conclusion.............................................................................................................. 9
Extra : Questionnaire............................................................................................ 10

Executive summary
We examined the willingness of our classmates to take risks. Around 80% of the
participants are not afraid of taking a risk and would jump of the 3 rd floor of a
burning building for example. No one told us that he/she never takes risks, but
swimming with sharks is something most of us would never do. No one is a fan of
Botox or plastic surgery. These are medical interventions that are not very
popular in our class. All of the participants would like to go live in a foreign
country. And we discovered that social media can certainly be seen as a risk too.
Think of the lack of privacy and cyberbullying.

Introduction
We are 2 Marketing students at Arteveldehogeschool Gent and for our English
course we had to examine the willingness of our classmates to take risks. We
want to emphasize that this survey is not representative, as it has been taken by
only 17 people from the same class. The questions were very general.
This report will look at :

How people in our class think about taking risks.

What risks everyone is afraid for or just want to take.
If social media can be seen as a risk.
How people would react in certain situations.

Findings

We did a survey for our classmates in our English course. We asked our questions
to 7 men and 10 women.

Of all the people who filled in the survey, only 24% of the participants said they
are afraid of taking risks. The 24% of the people that are afraid are all women.

None of the people said they have never taken risks. Weekly, monthly and risks
that occur every year are divided equally. Woman often take risks on a monthly
base, while men usually take risks weekly. Which means that the men of our class
take more risks than the women of our class.

Most of people take risks in social life (88%) and in second place in education
with 59%. Financial (29%) and work (41%) are less chosen. Taking risk in social
life and work are divided equally between male and female. Taking risks in
education and financial is more taken by women.

We can conclude that all of the people in our class will take the risk of parasailing
but swimming with sharks is the most risky thing to do with 47% followed by
caving with 29%. Looking at the women in our class, we see that they swimming
with sharks appeared as the riskiest sport.

Botox is the most risky in this case, according to our class. Nobody would us
Botox, according to a percentage of 53. Getting a tattoo or piercing is
represented by 24%. More men will not take the risk of taking a tattoo and more
women wont take Botox compared to men.

The financial risk that nobody will take is keeping money at home, what 47% of
our respondents chose. Followed by betting, what 35% of our respondents filled
in. Buying stocks and playing with Euro Millions are not so risky. More women will
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not take the risk to bet or keep a lot of money at home. And most men will not
take the risk of Euro Millions.
We asked our classmates what financial risks they have already taken or what
financial risk they are willing to take. We found out that more people will buy
stocks and invest in property, like an apartment or a house for example. Investing
in funds and betting are often said too. Traveling and spending more than you
loan is not chosen that much, few people wrote that down.

We also asked our classmates if they see social media as a risk. And if so, why? 5
out of 17 people answered NO, social media is not a risk if you control what you
put on your accounts and dont talk to strangers. You have to use it smart. Most
of the people answered YES, social media can be seen as a risk. Most of the
reasons were that theres not much privacy on it. You never know where your
personal information well end up and in whos hands. Pictures everyone post on
social media can be used in commercials and are public. Everyone know the
stories about people who post things on Facebook and lose their job over it. Think
of the WK-babe Axelle, who lost all her popularity and job offers after posting a
picture on Facebook of her after shooting down an animal. Or the woman who
received a lot of criticism after she was posting a Tweet on Twitter of her
travelling to Africa while saying Hope I dont get Ebola. Social media can also be
seen as a risk if you think of all the cyberbullying, fake accounts and the shame
that people lose a lot of precious time on the internet.

59% of our classmates is willing to skip courses. This is probably due to the fact
that most courses are not mandatory. Even if your chances get smaller when you
skip a course, students nowadays are very confident about passing anyway.

As you can see on the figure above, more than half of the participants say now
that they will never do plastic surgery. A lot of famous people do plastic surgery,
but its not very popular with younger people, even if their idol is doing it .
Donating blood is something everybody would do. Its the medical risk that you
hear most of and the less dangerous one of our 4 given examples.
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As we told earlier, this is a case of choosing love above a career, we would be

able to show some kind of difference between man and woman. We had
predicted that almost all of the women in class would choose love over a career
and most men would choose their career over love. But what did we discover? 4
of the 6 nos were from women! Times have changed. Women nowadays care
more about their career than ever before. And men also take risks for love.

You can already see it on the graphic. No one in our class is afraid of taking the
risk to go live in a foreign country. With cellphones, internet, nobody is ever far
away from anyone. Which makes it a lot easier nowadays to travel or live in a
foreign country. I also think that, being marketing students, young people these
days are encouraged to go abroad and learn different cultures, languages,
The unknown has become less unknown.

This was a hard question, and we think youd have to be in this situation to really
know if youd take the risk of jumping or not. Only 2 members of our class said
that they wouldnt jump. The others said they would. The 3 rd floor is high, you get
a chance of surviving or breaking something, even die. Its a sure thing that
everyone would jump. Recently, 3 friends got in a situation like this. 2 jumped
and survived while 1 didnt jump and died because of the fire. We think your
chances at surviving such situation would increase if you jump.

We asked our classmates if they could be an animal, which one they would be.
The women mostly chose very sweet, common animals. 4 of them said a cat, we
also had a horse, a fly, a bird, an eagle and 2 tigers. The men chose to be a bird,
a lion, a fox, an eagle, a penguin and a cat. Most of them didnt go for any
ordinary animals. Which we think means men like to differ themselves from
people, while women are more focused on sweetness and mostly animals people
keep at home.

Conclusion
We want to emphasize again that this is not a representative study because we
have only interviewed 17 people and the gender is not equally divided. There
would have to be more people to fill in the survey in order to call it
representative. Things that have been said in the open questions can be put in
multiple choice questions so its easier to summarize
The conclusion of our survey :
Most of our classmates are willing to take risks. At least so they say. Its one thing
to tell what youd do in a certain case and another to actually stand in some sort
of equal situation where you have to choose what to do. In our class, a man is
more of a risk-taker than a woman, but everybody take risks in their lives.
The most taken risks are taken in the cases of education end social life. We can
conclude these are the less risky things. The risk in educations are more taken by
women than by men. The most risky sport is swimming with sharks. Botox will be
less done by women than with men. So most women think its something risky. A
piercing or a tattoo is for some people seen as risk too. Nobody will keep a lot of
money at home, certainly not women. Even betting is not done by them. Buying
stocks is a thing that most of the people will do of have already done. Investing in
property is also not seen as risky because different people said they will do it.

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Extra : Questionnaire
1. Gender?
o Male
o Female
2. Are you afraid of taking risks?
o Yes
o No
3. Do you often take risks?
o never
o Weekly
o Monthly
o Yearly
4. In which cases do you take risks?
o Education
o Financial
o Work
o Social life
o Others:
5. What extreme sport do you NOT want to do?
o Bungee jumping
o Parasailing
o Spelunking/caving
o Swimming with sharks
6. What risk would you never take with your body?
o Tattoo
o Piercing
o Cutting or coloring your hair
o Botox
7. Which financial risk are you Not willing to take?
o Betting
o Buying stocks
o Playing with Euro Millions
o Keeping a lot of money at home
8. Have you already taken a financial risk?
o Yes
Which one?: .
o No
Are you willing to take one?
9. Can we see social media as a social risk? Why?

10.Are you willing to take the risk to skip lessons knowing your chances at
passing the class decline?
o Yes
o No
11.Which medical risks are you not willing to take?
o Giving a kidney
o Donating blood
o An eye surgery (when you cant see very well anymore)
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o Plastic surgery
12.Imagine if you fall in love with a colleague, would you risk losing your job over
this?
o Yes
o No
13.Would you risk to go live in a foreign country?
o Yes
o No1
14.Imagine youre standing in a burning building at the 3 rd floor. Would you jump
out of the window?
o Yes
o No
15.If you had to be an animal, which one would you want to be?

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