Week 10: Final Post!

Hey everyone, welcome back to my senior project!

This week honestly felt like the final stretch of a race, where I’m trying to put all my energy into sprinting towards the finish line. Most of my time this week has gone into working on all of my final products for the project, including my research paper, educational brochure, research poster, and presentation slides for the senior symposium next week.

I’ve also continued reviewing my data and organizing my final conclusions. According to my results, the most common misconception people held about hoarding was that it is a result of mental instability, while the least common misconception was that hoarding is a result of messiness. Something else interesting I found is that age and ethnicity showed the biggest differences in levels of agreement with misconceptions about hoarding, while biological sex did not seem to have a major impact.

Looking back on this project, I think one of the most important things I learned is just how much stigma shapes the way people view behaviors they don’t fully understand. Through both my research and survey data, I was able to see how strongly stereotypes influence perception, which then became a big part of why creating the brochure became so important to me. I wanted to create something that directly addresses these stereotypes and encourages a more empathetic perspective.

At this point, I’m mostly focused on refining everything and preparing to present my work at the symposium. It’s honestly surreal seeing this project finally come together after so many weeks of endless research, data collection, analysis, and writing.

Thanks for following along with my project journey!