Single Mother Stats: SurveyStud

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, single motherhood is now becoming the new “social-norm.”

This prevalence is due in part to the growing trend of children born outside marriage — a societal trend that was virtually unheard of decades ago.

About 4 of 10 or 40% of children were born to unwed mothers. Nearly two-thirds are born to mothers under the age of 30.2

Of all single-parent families in the U.S., single mothers make up the majority.

According to U.S. Census Bureau, out of 12 million single parent families in 2015, more than 80% were headed by single mothers.

Today 1 in 4 or 25% of children under the age of 18 — a total of about 17.4 million — are being raised without a father and nearly half (45%) live below the poverty line.

For those living with father, about 21% live in poverty. In contrast, among children living with both parents, 13% are counted as poor.

STATISTICS OF SINGLE PARENT FAMILIES * (2015)

– 84% Single Mom Family
– 16% Single Dad Family

DEMOGRAPHICS

– Around 49% of single mothers have never married

– 51% are either divorced, separated or widowed. Half have one child, 30% have two.

– About two thirds are White, one third Black, one quarter Hispanic. One third have a college degree, while one sixth have not completed high school.

EMPLOYMENT

two thirds of single mothers are working outside the home, a slightly greater share than the share of married mothers who are also working outside the home.

However, only half are employed full-time all year long, a quarter (23.2%) are jobless the entire year. Among those who were laid off or looking for work, less than a quarter (22.4%) received unemployment benefits.

If a single mother is able to work, her earning power still lags significantly compared with men’s, about 78¢ to a $1 for the same job — leaving a wage gap of 23 cents on the dollar.

The wage disparities are even greater for women of color — African-American women earn only 64¢, while Hispanic and Latinas fare worse, being paid just 56¢ on the dollar.

INCOME

Single mothers earn income that place them well below married mothers in the income ladder. The gap between the two groups is significantly large.

The median income for families led by a single mother in 2015 was about $26,000, one third (⅓) the median for married couple families ($84,000.) Nearly half with an annual income of less than $25,000.

Source: Contact us for information

SurveyStud: https://appsto.re/us/Ddj18.i

Effective Feedback: SurveyStud

Feedback is valuable information that will be used to make important decisions. Top performing companies are top performing companies because they consistently search for ways to make their best even better. For top performing companies ‘continuous improvement’ is not just a showy catchphrase.

Effective feedback has benefits for the giver, the receiver, and the wider organization. Here are five reasons why feedback is so important.

1. Feedback is always there. If you ask someone in your organization when feedback occurs, they will typically mention an employee survey, performance appraisal, or training evaluation. In actuality, feedback is around us all the time. Every time we speak to a person, employee, customer, vendor, etc., we communicate feedback. In actuality, it’s impossible not to give feedback.

2. Feedback is effective listening. Whether the feedback is done verbally or via a feedback survey, the person providing the feedback needs to know they have been understood (or received) and they need to know that their feedback provides some value. When conducting a survey, always explain why respondents’ feedback is important and how their feedback will be used.

3. Feedback can motivate. By asking for feedback, it can actually motivate employees to perform better. Employees like to feel valued and appreciate being asked to provide feedback that can help formulate business decisions. And feedback from client, suppliers, vendors, and stakeholders can be used to motivate to build better working relations

4. Feedback can improve performance. Feedback is often mistaken for criticism. In fact, what is viewed as negative criticism is actually constructive criticism and is the best find of feedback that can help to formulate better decisions to improve and increase performance.

5. Feedback is a tool for continued learning. Invest time in asking and learning about how others experience working with your organization. Continued feedback is important across the entire organization in order to remain aligned to goals, create strategies, develop products and services improvements, improve relationships, and much more. Continued learning is the key to improving.

10 Surprising Statistics on Women in the Workplace: SurveyStud

Take a moment to read through these ten eye-opening stats to see where women really are in the working world and get some inspiration to see where changes need to be made and where advancements can be lauded for this generation and the next.

1. Women comprise 46% of the total U.S. labor force. With almost half of the workforce being women, female employees aren’t exactly a rarity. For most women today, getting a job is an expected part of life. This is a big change from past decades. In 1900, fewer than 20% of women participated in the labor market while today the number is around 75% and growing.

2. Women make only 77.5 cents for every dollar that men earn. This figure comes from data on the 2010 census. Despite this gap, many economists feel that the gap between pay for men and women is due to different personal choices men and women make about personal fulfillment, child rearing and hours at work. Whichever you choose to believe, the reality is that the gap is slowly but surely closing as women become increasingly educated and dual income families become the norm, but this isn’t much consolation to those who feel discriminated against today.

3. The more education a woman has, the greater the disparity in her wages. This certainly doesn’t mean women should shy away from professional positions, but they should be aware that they may have to battle harder for equal pay. Women in professional specialty occupations were found to earn just 72.7% of what men in the same position earned, and women in upper level executive, administrative and managerial occupations earned even less at 72.3%. If you compare this against the average of 77.5%, the numbers speak for themselves, and this graphic from the New York Times makes it even easier to see.

4. Women may work longer to receive the promotions that provide access to higher pay. One example provided by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that women often have to work three years longer in a teaching position to be promoted to a principal than their male counterparts. Some studies suggest that this is because women and men adapt different strategies when it comes to management and pursuing promotions, yet other studies connect it less to work and more to gender-based biases.

5. Women business owners employ 35% more people than all the Fortune 500 companies combined. If you’re like most people, you don’t picture a woman when you think about a business owner. Yet there are about 9.1 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., a number that comprises nearly 40% of all businesses. The idea that women don’t make good managers just doesn’t hold up when you look at these kinds of numbers, with women managing a large number of employees and making healthy profits while doing so.

6. Women account for 46% of the labor force, but 59% of workers making less than $8 an hour. What does it mean? It means that many women are taking on jobs that pay well under a living wage. With nearly 16% of U.S. households having women who are divorced, widowed or never married as the sole providers, this leaves many women at a distinct disadvantage and struggling to make ends meet as they dominate jobs in low paying fields.

7. Only 53% of employers provide at least some replacement pay during periods of maternity leave. Despite the fact that the arrival of a child means extra bills and expenses, many employers don’t provide women with any benefits if they to leave work temporarily to have a child. While there is no law requiring companies to offer paid maternity leave, considering it is an issue that primarily affects women, it’s certainly a blow to their income potential and ability to care for their families and themselves.

8. Four in ten businesses worldwide have no women in senior management. This shouldn’t be a surprise given the way many countries feel about women in the workplace. Here in the United States, however, women still feel the stress of trying to break into upper management, with 93% of the 439 senior women executives surveyed by Korn/Ferry International in 1992 feeling that a glass ceiling for women still existed. Yet new studies report that women outnumber men as managers in fields like human resources, health administration and education–perhaps stemming from reports that many businesses have seen a direct financial impact from hiring women.

9. Women earned less than men in 99% of all occupations. In virtually every field that women choose to enter, they can expect to earn less over their lifetime than their male counterparts. This means that over 47 years of full-time work, this gap amounts to an estimated loss in wages for women of $700,000 for high school graduates, $1.2 million for college grads, and $2 million for professional school grads–a staggering amount.

10. Minority women fare the worst when it comes to equal pay. African-American women earn 64 cents to every dollar earned by white men and Hispanic women just 52 cents per dollar. Whether it’s attitudes about race or gender that are at play, it’s clear that something needs to be done to level the playing field.

SurveyStud: https://appsto.re/us/Ddj18.i

Breast Cancer Stats 2016: SurveyStud

In 2016, an estimated 246,660 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S., along with 61,000 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.

1 in 8 or 12% of U.S. women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime.

About 2,600 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2016. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000.

Breast cancer incidence rates in the U.S. began decreasing in the year 2000, after increasing for the previous two decades. They dropped by 7% from 2002 to 2003 alone. One theory is that this decrease was partially due to the reduced use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) by women after the results of a large study called the Women’s Health Initiative were published in 2002. These results suggested a connection between HRT and increased breast cancer risk.

About 40,450 women in the U.S. are expected to die in 2016 from breast cancer, though death rates have been decreasing since 1989. Women under 50 have experienced larger decreases. These decreases are thought to be the result of treatment advances, earlier detection through screening, and increased awareness.

For women in the U.S., breast cancer death rates are higher than those for any other cancer, besides lung cancer.

Besides skin cancer, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women. In 2016, it’s estimated that just under 30% of newly diagnosed cancers in women will be breast cancers.

In women under 45, breast cancer is more common in African-American women than white women. Overall, African-American women are more likely to die of breast cancer. For Asian, Hispanic, and Native-American women, the risk of developing and dying from breast cancer is lower.

In 2016, there are more than 2.8 million women with a history of breast cancer in the U.S. This includes women currently being treated and women who have finished treatment.

A woman’s risk of breast cancer nearly doubles if she has a first-degree relative (mother, sister, daughter) who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Less than 15% of women who get breast cancer have a family member diagnosed with it.

About 5-10% of breast cancers can be linked to gene mutations (abnormal changes) inherited from one’s mother or father. Mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are the most common. On average, women with a BRCA1 mutation have a 55-65% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. For women with a BRCA2 mutation, the risk is 45%. Breast cancer that is positive for the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations tends to develop more often in younger women. An increased ovarian cancer risk is also associated with these genetic mutations. In men, BRCA2 mutations are associated with a lifetime breast cancer risk of about 6.8%; BRCA1 mutations are a less frequent cause of breast cancer in men.

About 85% of breast cancers occur in women who have no family history of breast cancer. These occur due to genetic mutations that happen as a result of the aging process and life in general, rather than inherited mutations.

The most significant risk factors for breast cancer are gender (being a woman) and age (growing older).

Source: BreastCancer.org

SurveyStud: https://appsto.re/us/Ddj18.i

Single Mom-Family Stats: SurveyStud

Who are single moms today? These single mom statistics might surprise you:

There are 10 million single mother-lead families in the United States (Census). 3x the number in 1960.

– 25% of families are headed by single moms. (Pew).

– 40% of babies born in the United States are born to single mothers. (Pew)
 
Millennial single mom statistics

– 57% of babies born to millennials were out of wedlock. (John’s Hopkins)

– 64% of millennial moms reported at least one birth out of wedlock. (John’s Hopkins)

More educated millennials are having babies outside of marriage. Of millennial moms who have babies outside of marriage:

– 67% have some college education, and 32% have four or more years of higher education. (John’s Hopkins)

Older single mom statistics

– 48% jump in births to unmarried women age 35-39 (CDC)

– 29% jump in births to unmarried moms aged 40-44 (CDC)

While the rate of babies born to single mothers has declined slightly, there is a notable rise in babies born to single moms by choice – women who tend to be older, more educated, higher income. (CDC)

Single moms’ education and income:

– 58% of single moms have attended college or have at least a bachelor’s degree (Pew)
Of millennial moms who have babies outside of marriage

– 67% have some college education, and 32% have four or more years of higher education. (John’s Hopkins)

– 32% earn $40,000+ (Census)

– 10% earn $80,000+ (Census)

Single moms are overwhelmingly doing it all alone:

– 51% of custodial parents have child support agreements (informal or formal), but only 41% received all child support owed. (Census)

– Of fathers who live apart from their children, only 22% of dads see their kids more than once per week. (Pew)

What is driving single mom trends?

There are 1.2 million divorces in the United States each year. (Census)

Traditional nuclear families with two married heterosexual parents are now the minority of U.S.

The rise of single motherhood is the largest influence on this trend — followed by gay families, multigenerational families and . (Pew)

– 46% millennials and 44% GenXers say “Marriage is becoming obsolete.” (Pew)

Setbacks: SurveyStud

When bad things happen, it’s easy to feel like a victim. Circumstances can feel out of control, and many of them actually are. But asking this question forces you to accept whatever has happened and to shift your mentality towards harnessing it in a constructive manner. While this is empowering, it may take a long time before you’re ready to ask what you can create from it.

I don’t want to sugarcoat this. So rather than immediately asking this question, I recommend looking at a four-step process. For minor setbacks this process may be fast, for major ones it may be long — there’s no “right” timeline. 

1. Accept whatever has happened: The first step is to accept whatever has happened. Acceptance may seem as simple as saying “well that happened,” but often we need to go through other phases to get there. It may look a bit like the Kubler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance.

2. Give yourself time and space to recover: When Steve Jobs got fired, he admitted that he “really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.”

Like Jobs, most of us need time to process our setbacks and “land” from them before we can think about creating from them. Stuffing your emotions may seem helpful in the short run, but it will ultimately hold you back. Instead, be compassionate with yourself and allow yourself space to heal or grieve. Go through it, not around it. Acceptance and recovery takes time. 

3. Get in the right frame of mind: As you recover, now is a good time to start rejuvenating yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually. Take small steps that help you get into the right frame of mind. Go to yoga or kickboxing class. Pray. Read a new book. Don’t worry so much about the future; just do what you need to do to regain your positive energy.

4. Ask the question: Once you’ve taken the above steps and are feeling a strong sense of self again, now is the time to ask the magic question: What can I create from this? Try brainstorming all of the different ways your setback could become the best thing that ever happened to you. It may be hard at first, but eventually you will turn a corner start begin brimming with possibility.

StartUp Growth: SurveyStud

Mohan Sawhney, a professor at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, notes that “[while] it’s tempting to view business growth as a smooth, linear path, the reality is much more complicated.” Often, the talent and leadership that enable rapid expansion in a company’s early stages may not be enough to keep fueling high growth and this causes businesses to stagnate.

Four fundamental steps growth-stage businesses must take:

1. Stay focused on what sells best.

Many startups fail because they spread themselves too thin at the growth stage. They try to do everything for any client or they try to expand into multiple new markets simultaneously. And many times these strategies just do not work.

Instead, business owners should concentrate on core business areas. Expansion is a must but thoughtful, targeted growth is what wins the day. Being too opportunistic can waste precious resources, as well as take focus away from what made them successful in the first place.

2. Then innovate and expand strategically.

During the growth stage, pivoting towards what sells best and moving away from what doesn’t is the key ingredient to maintaining, or even increasing, expectations. Entrepreneurs need to strategize and innovate into niches that will help the core business expand.

Consider everything Uber has done to date. Uber continues to penetrate new and potentially lucrative markets around the world. Their mobile payment services have evolved to accommodate multiple payment options, which has proved useful in international markets–thus the company is consistently increasing its selection of vehicles. Hence maintaining focus on what it sells best and what its customers want most — rides.

3. Let processes and products take center stage.

During the initial startup phase, many companies rely on the skills of a small core team to seize opportunities and impress clients. But during the growth stage, maintaining that level of quality becomes a very difficult task, especially as core team members move on to new opportunities.

As small businesses transition into the growth stage, they need to standardize business processes so that great experiences can be consistently reproduced. This is accomplished by embedding expertise into the processes and structures that keep a company afloat.

4. Build your brand.

The startup phase is driven by client relationships. A great way to ensure clients think well of a company is to focus on building a positive brand image. This makes it less likely that a customer will leave if their current account manager calls it quits — something many small businesses fear.

By staying laser-focused on what works, pivoting away from what does not, continually innovating, and gauging feedback from your customers with tools like SurveyStud (smartphone survey app), a mid stage company should be able to avoid falling into the trap of the growth plateau. 

SurveyStud: https://appsto.re/us/Ddj18.i

Statistics on Female Self Esteem: SurveyStud

Pressure & Perfectionism

74% of girls say they are under pressure to please everyone (Girls Inc, The Supergirl Dilemma)

98% of girls feel there is an immense pressure from external sources to look a certain way (National Report on Self Esteem)

92% of teen girls would like to change something about the way they look, with body weight ranking the highest. (Dove campaign)

90% of eating disorders are found in girls (National Association for Self Esteem)

1 in 4 girls today fall into a clinical diagnosis – depression, eating disorders, cutting, and other mental/emotional disorders. On top of these, many more report being constantly anxious, sleep deprived, and under significant pressure. (The Triple Bind, Steven Hinshaw)

By age thirteen, 53% of American girls age 13 are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen.

Gender Disparity

34 women have ever served as governors compared to 2319 men (Center for American Women and Politics)

3% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women (CNN Money)

3% of clout positions in the mainstream media – telecommunications, entertainment, publishing and advertising- are held by women

3% of creative directors within ad agencies are women (Advertising Age)

80% of all purchasing decisions are made by women (Forbes)

89 countries have more women in national legislatures than the United States (Miss Representation/Inter-Parliamentary Union)

29% of American firms are owned by women, yet employ only 6% of the country’s workforce and account for barely 4% of business revenues. 

SurveyStud: https://appsto.re/us/Ddj18.i

Stats on Employee Feedback: SurveyStud

When you go into work, how often are you being given advice or feedback from your management?

The ole school approach is to give employees the task and expect them to succeed. They do the same thing over and over and the paycheck is the reward. No questions asked.

However, we have advanced in workplaces since the early 1900’s. Labor and productivity has increased, but unfortunately, happiness and communication between management, has been on the decline, till now.

HR managers are using advanced metrics and data to better their office. Employee engagement surveys [SurveyStud] have been a new craze that people are using in order to receive employee feedback.

Employee feedback is becoming a major point of emphasis as of late, as managers are utilizing feedback to make workplaces better and recognizing their employees by giving them more than the metaphoric pat on the back.

The feedback they’re obtaining from employees are coming in many forms, recognition platforms, employee surveys, even employee engagement platforms [SurveyStud]–and endgame is to give and get information from the employee and managers.

SurveyStud: https://appsto.re/us/Ddj18.i

Creating an Effective Survey: SurveyStud

Creating online surveys is as much an art as it is a science. It involves attention to detail in the design and flow of your survey. Creating an effective survey that yields actionable insights can be difficult.

Here are 4 tips for creating an effective survey.

1. Keep It Simple

Do you remember taking the SAT or ACT? It’s a long and boring process. Your average survey respondent can start to feel that way about 15 minutes into a survey. Fifteen minutes is a strong upper-limit for most surveys.

When a survey is too long, two bad things can happen:

— Respondents mentality drop out

— Clients get frustrated

2. Use Scales Whenever Possible

Scales are more than a little important.
Rather than asking respondents a basic yes or no question, use scales that measure both the direction and the intensity of opinions.

Scales extend the power of analysis from basic percentages to high-level analyses based on means and variance estimates

3. Keep Coded Values Consistent

Every survey response, option, question, or answer is coded as a numeric value that is reported as a percent of responses or as a mean, median, range, etc.

These values are the basis for analysis.

  — Mean: Often referred to as an average, it is the sum of all the values divided by the number of values.

  — Median: The middle point in a data set. To determine the median, lay out a distribution from lowest to highest and select the middle value.

  — Range: The highest and lowest data points in a distribution form the range. VARIANCE: A dispersion measure of how far a set of numbers is spread out.

For simplicity, keep your scale direction consistent throughout your survey. This makes it easier for respondents to answer and for you as a researcher to conduct your analysis.

The simplest solution is just to keep all scales consistent throughout every survey.

4. Explain Why

Respondents are more likely to help you if they see something of positive value for them. Value offerings can range from a very general altruistic appeal for their help to a very specific offer of an economic incentive. For instance, with a customer feedback survey, you can explain that feedback will help improve customer service.

Here are some quick examples:

Make it specific to them: With employee evaluations, you can explain that feedback will be used to determine awards, promotions, and pay raises and will help management make organizational decisions that will affect them.

Explain unexpected questions: For instance, if it’s important for you to ask toy store customers their preferred color of jeans, you might want to explain why that is relevant.

The plug:  If this made sense to you try our smartphone (survey) app… SurveyStud https://appsto.re/us/Ddj18.i