Midterm

RA: 2; Response to Survey

       In this digital age where information is so readily available at the tip of our fingers, conducting a survey to see "just how informed" the American public is, specifically residents in the Bay Area, towards topics that include the local governor's race, and what type of media, if any, they pay attention to, would be a great way to asses how informed the bay area citizens are, in a day and age that is flourishing off of accesible information, in all aspects of life.  My personal survey consisted of five questions that were either true or false questions, or one word answers.  I decided to create the survey in this sort of structure due to the ability to quanitfy data in a much easier manner.  The topics in the survey regarded the local governor's race, the indivduals political party affiliation, and what new's broadcasting company they were most likely to watch if they had to pick one.  My hypothesis was that the people who answered my survey would be somewhat politically informed, in the sense that they knew where they stood on certain issues, but they might not know the background of the election canidates, and how the candiates would run their policies if elected to be the Governor of California; therefore, on a scale of one to ten, my guess would be an eight.  My second hypothesis is that those who are of the same political party of their parents, are also most likely to watch the same broadcasting news network on television.

       The exact questions that I asked were these listed below:

True or False.  Was Meg Whitman the CEO of Ebay?
True of False.  Did Jerry Brown ever run for a presidential election?
On a scale of one to ten?  Ten being the most informed, how politically aware are you of the campaign issues facing Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown?
Are you of the same political party of your parents? If so, state the party.
If you had to pick one news broadcasting company out of the five listed here (CNN, FOX, MSNBC, BBC), which one would you most likely watch?

       The assignment was to create 5 questions regarding the common theme of the last unit read in Alexander and Hanson's book, Taking Sides, which to an extent, touched on the topic of whether people were more informed in a digital decade where almost anything and everything is accesible.  To expand on the theme of citizen's accesiblity to information, the survey was created in order to try and determine if people, specifically, Bay Area citizens, were well informed on the governor election canidates, and whether their own political party affiliation affects which broadcasting network they watch.  The last two questions of my survery were designed to uncover whether people were independent thinkers, and if they purposely sought bias news, to further validate their own political opinions. 
      As mentioned before, the actual survey itself was five questions long and required answers that were brief, and able to quanitfy as results, in order to gain a proper conclsuion of the two hypotheses' that I formed.  The survey questions were printed out on paper in numberical form, just as you can see above, with space for people to write their answers.  I surveyed forty people, which might lead to an inconclusive study due to the minimal participants involved.  One of the reasons the study only consisted of forty people, was because of the lack of availability to a large scale amount of people willing to take the survey.  Some people I asked claimed they were too busy to take the survey, while others did not want to take it due to embarassment, even though I said the survey would be anonymous!  I did the best that I could recruiting people to answer the questions, and I have to say in all honesty, that it was personally hard for me just to obtain the minimal amount of forty people.  Although agreeing with the assignment given, anything less than forty would not have been a conclusive unbiased study.  Also, when asking people to take the survey, I made sure to get people from differnt communities, neighborhoods, and tried to have gender be equally distributed amongst the participants.  In my opinon, I thought that making these efforts would even further prove my hypothesis, and if anything else, it would provide for a more unbiased study.
      
       My results were partially correct.  Hypothesis one was disconfirmed to an extent, so I would personally feel that more research should be conducted, and that the sample size should be increased.  85% of the participants answered correctly to question number one, regarding Meg Whitman being the CEO of Ebay, while a mere 45% answered correctly to Jerry Brown running for Presidency.  The average mean of the forty participants regarding political awareness was that of a 6.5, which was lower  than I predicted (I predicted an 8).  75% of the participants said that they were of the same political party afflilation in respect to those of their parents.  The majority of participants watched MSNBC or FOX, which comprised of 75% of the 40 people.  While BBC and CNN were the less popular and viewed broadcasting companies.  My hypothesis second hypothesis was confirmed in that those who were of the same Political Party of their parents, watched the same news broadcasting network of their parents.  Personally, I would find it extremely interesting to go a step further in this study to determine a) if republican voters watched FOX and if b)democrat voters watched MSNBC.  However, unfortunately this cannot be determined in the study that I conducted.
       The results that I obtained can mean a number of things, but considering my sample size of participants was extremely small, who knows how bias this study may be.  Overall, it is my assumption from these results that the only reason the participants answered so well on question number one id because Meg Whitman has more income to generate on ad campaigns that are flooded in between any and every TV show, which would explain the participants knowledge of her job as CEO at Ebay.  Question number two was not answered as well, and I also blame this on the lack of funding regarding Jerry Brown's campaign.  Even though the participants did answer well on the first question, it does not validate that they are politically aware citizens, and even the participants themselves said they were just over average on a scale of one to ten regarding their own political awareness.  My second hypothesis was correct, which means that parents have a strong influence over their children.  But in a day in age where information is so easily accesible, one would think the children would do reserach on their own for how they feel on certain issues.  I can go as far to say that the children that affiliate with their parent's political party watch the same news broadcasting company, but I think it would be necessary to solely focus on this issue at hand.  Overall hypothesis one was incorrect, and hypothesis 2 was correct to an extent, due to the fact that the sample size was small, and I could have asked a more detailed question.  I believe that those participants who are republicans would be more likely to watch FOX and those particpants that were democrats would be more likely to watch MSNBC.  In this day and age where infomration is EXTREMELY successful, my findings have been that people are not more politically aware than they were twenty years ago, and that even though there is more information out there, it can be filled with bias and untruthfulness.