Self expression

Self expression and hair have a strong correlation. Personally, I love using my hair to express myself through different hairstyles. On the Background Survey I conducted with my participants, 95% of total participants agreed that they see a relation between the health of their hair and self expression. Expressing ourselves can also lead to a better sense of self, touching into our psychology.

On the graphs, you will notice random words and numbers clumped together on the horizontal "Participant" axis, as well as "B[number] and A[number]."

Each participant is represented on the graph. Since I can't give away the participants' names and reveal their identities, I decided to create a code for each participant.

"F17IndMW" represents a participant whos F (female) 17 (years old) Ind (Indian ethnicity) M(medium hair length) and W(wavy hair texture). Similarly, F18ChiMS applies to the participant who is female, 18 years old, Chinese, medium hair length, and straight hair type.

"B[number] and A[number]" represent each of the four weeks, and two data points from each week. B1 means week 1, before hair wash, and A1 means week 1, after hair wash. You can follow along with this points through the graph to understand the context behind each data point in these data models.

The graphs below represent the results from the rate of self expression, on a scale of 1-10, across the four weeks of this experiment in the control group and the experimental group.

Self expression can change due to numerous factors that this experiment couldn't control. If someone had a bad day, they might not express themselves as much, but it wasn't necessarily because of their hair. Participants were asked to respond based on their hair, but they could still unconsciously consider other factors when answering the question. Unlike hair loss, self expression isn't something that we can see a completely clear pattern for. It's pretty random because of all the external factors that could affect this aspect of hair.

That being said, let's work with what we have! In the control group, each participant's results vary per day, and there isn't a clear pattern we can follow, as expected. However, if we look at their self expression on an average, 80% of participants' self expression in the control group either stayed the same or decreased over the four week period. In the experimental group, 90% of participants had a relatively consistent increasing trend after every week, showing consistent improvement in their self expression. Though one participant in the group ended with less self expression than they started the experiment with, they only ended with one rate lower, and also had pretty random results over the course of the four weeks.

An essential factor to note is that self expression could be different depending on gender. Women might tend to express themselves more based on their appearance, specifically hair. That being said, numerous men do express themselves through their hair, but the occurrences of men vs. women expressing themselves might differ. What do you think? Let's see what happened in this study:

Average rate of change of self expression measured: -0.5 change in self expression after four weeks

VS.

Average rate of change of self expression measured: +2.75 change in self expression after four weeks

These data points were my favorite to analyze! The striking difference of self expression of men in the different groups was intriguing. On an average, the rating of self expression for men went up by 4 points on the scale of 1-10 for the experimental group, while it went down by 1.5 points for men in the control group. The Ayurvedic oil nourished hair in the experimental group, which resulted in an increase in self expression. In the control group, there was a mix of increase and decrease of self expression amongst females, however everyone except one female in the experimental group had an increase in self expression over the four week period.

Overall, as random self expression could be, results indicate a strong increase in self expression for both men and women in the experimental group, while results remain rather random/ imply a decrease in self expression for both men and women in the control group.