GENETIC TRAITS

Purpose Research question
The purpose of this research is to determine the frequencies of left- and right-handedness among students at the university.  This activity will aim to address the question, Is right-handedness dominant in male students at the university

Hypotheses
The hypothesis of this research study is that right-handedness is dominant in the male gender.  A second hypothesis is that left-handedness is dominant in the female gender.  The null hypotheses, on the other hand, would be that right-handedness is not dominant in the male gender and that left-handedness is not dominant in the female gender.


Variables
The independent variable of this research study will include the actual hand that is used by each study participant in his daily activities such as writing, eating and cooking.  The dependent variable would be the gender of each study participant.


Materials
A tally sheet that will list the number of study participants, as well as the handedness trait, will be employed in the study.  In addition, calculators for the computation of percentages of will also be used during the data analysis.

Procedures Methods
The study population consisted of 100 students (50 males, 50 females) from the university.  Each student was asked for his or her consent to participate in the study.  Once an informed consent was collected, the study participant was then asked about which hand was generally used for daily routine activities, such as writing, eating, brushing teeth and so on.  The answers of each study participant were then tabulated.  Computations on the percentage of each group per population were determined.  

Results
The collected information from 100 study participants is presented in Table 1.
Table 1.  Frequency of individuals for each dexterity or handedness
GenderHandednessTotalLeft-handedRight-handedAmbidextrousMale2 (4)48 (96)050Female3 (6)46 (92)1 (2)50Total5 (5)94 (94)1 (2)100

The results show that majority (94) of the study participants employed his or her right hand in routine activities on a daily basis.  Based on gender frequencies, both males and females have been observed to use the right hand more frequently than the left hand.  Among the male study participants, 48 individuals, representing 96 of the male subpopulation, expressed that they used their right hand in daily activities.  Among the female study participants, 46 individuals, representing 92 of the female subpopulation, indicated that their right hand was usually employed in performing daily tasks.

Only a small proportion of study participants have been observed to employ their left hand for daily activities.  Among males, only 2 individuals, representing 4 of the male subpopulation, employed his left hand for simple daily activities such as writing and eating.  On the other hand, 3 female study participants, representing 6 of the female sub-population, employed their left hand for routine activities.  Interestingly, there is one female study participant who indicated that she was ambidextrous and thus capable of using both her left and right hands for daily activities.  The capability of this single ambidextrous participant is similar to a recent report published elsewhere (Adam 227).

Discussion
Based on the frequencies of left- and right-handedness in a study population of 100 university students, the research study showed that right-handedness was dominant in both male and female genders.  This observation thus accepts the first hypothesis that right-handedness was dominant in the male gender.  On the other hand, the null hypothesis that right-handedness in the males is not dominant was therefore rejected.  Furthermore, the second hypothesis that left-handedness was dominant in the female gender should be rejected because majority of the females in the study are right-handed.  The null hypothesis that left-handedness was not dominant among females was therefore accepted.

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