Political Party Knowledge 1 Running head: PARTY DIFFERENCES IN POLITICAL PARTY KNOWLEDGE Party Differences in Political Party Knowledge Emily Fox, Sarah Smith, Griffin Liford Hanover College PSY 220: Research Design and Statistics Fall 2008
Political Party Knowledge 2 Abstract This study was designed to examine the effects of political media exposure on knowledge of the platform of one's political party. Participants (N= 23, 61% male) completed a 22 item questionnaire testing political party platform knowledge and amount of political media exposure. Participants in the Democrat group were found to have slightly higher knowledge about their political party than participants in the Republican group, however this difference was not significant (p=0.135). There was a significant correlation between knowledge of one's party and media exposure such that people with high political knowledge tended to also have greater political media exposure (r= 0.62). This suggests that media exposure may be an indicator of political party knowledge, but may not cause higher percent correct scores.
Political Party Knowledge 3 Party Difference in Political Party Knowledge Differences in political parties level of political knowledge is an interesting and important factor to measure. With the election having just taken place, many people in our country have paid close attention to candidates and have worked on being informed voters. Many citizens have watched the Presidential debates on television as well as visit party websites and even going to political rallies to hear their favorite candidate speak. There has been an extreme focus on this election especially because of the current President not being up for re-election and a new candidate trying to make history. There has been a lot of focus on the Democratic Party itself with their close race in the primary election and trying to gain a bigger control over the Senate and House of Representatives. This election is also important for college age students because for many of them, it is the first time that they will be able to exercise their right to vote. Many, but not all, college students have tried to stay informed about politics and become informed voters. College students want to be more knowledgeable about their country and take a stance and decide where they stand in issues. College students have been exposed to a lot of media in their election by watching television commercials, news programs, exposure to t-shirts, bumper stickers, yard signs, even the popular college Internet network of Facebook has had a lot of political content. The generation of college students now have experienced one of the most involved and anticipated elections. They are excited to be participating in such a historic period in our country's history. It is important to examine their political knowledge so that possibly it can be compared to the American adult s political knowledge. Given that political interest among college students were at an all time low as recently as 1998, (Mann, 1999), it would be important to examine if today's college
Political Party Knowledge 4 students are better informed about politics than college students eight, even twenty, years ago. Political knowledge is an important area to measure to gain a better understanding of the citizens of our country. Media plays a large role in the campaigns of political candidates. During the recent presidential election, the American public was exposed to each nominee s message through television, newspaper, magazines, Internet, and radio. Because of the amount of time and money put into these different means of reaching people, one would assume that media would play some role in informing citizens of each party s stances on key issues. The study conducted by Eveland and Scheufele explored the role of news media in informing the audience in particular. Their study, unlike ours, examined whether different forms of news media function to increase the gap in political knowledge between socioeconomic classes. Their data did support the connection of news media and gaps in political participation and knowledge, there was in fact a gap in knowledge between high and low level of media exposure (Eveland & Scheufele, 2000). This was useful in the formation of our hypothesis. Given that the 2008 Democratic primary was much longer than the 2008 Republican primary, thus gaining more media coverage of the party s stances, the populace may have been exposed to more information about the Democratic stance on key issues. Additionally, according to Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post in an October 8 th, 2008 article, Barack Obama outspent opponent John McCain nearly 3:1 on television advertising in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign (Cillizza, 2008). Given this information, it is safe to assume that the American public was exposed
Political Party Knowledge 5 to more advertisements supporting the Democratic political party than the Republican Party. Also, given that debate viewing and media exposure to political issues enhances a person s understanding of political topics (Feldman, 2008) and that Democrats are likely to have had more media exposure to their own party's positions than Republicans during the 2008 primaries and general election campaigns, we expected that participants who identified themselves as Democrat would have a higher level of knowledge of their party s platform than participants who identified themselves as Republican. We hypothesized those participants who identified themselves as Democrat would be more knowledgeable of their political party s stances on key issues than participants who self identify as Republican, due to Democrats having more exposure to the media than Republicans. To test this hypothesis, we constructed a 22 item questionnaire testing each participant s political party platform knowledge as well as each one s media exposure level and administered it to 23 participants. Each participant would identify whether they affiliated themselves as Republican, Democrat, or neither. We used this identification as a means of obtaining a percent correct score from the number of questions answered correctly correlating to that party. The second half of our questionnaire was questions pertaining to political media's influence for each participant. In the beginning of our questionnaire we also included a demographic section. According to Dudash and Wells, their research results showed that different types of media were main sources that young citizens utilize for their political knowledge. After Dudash and Wells completed a list of sources, they categorized these responses into
Political Party Knowledge 6 seven categories; discussion and talk, internet, cable news, newspapers, radio, local news, and campaign advertisements (Dudash & Wells, 2007). When referring back to their research we decided to have these categories included in our media section on the questionnaire with questions ranging from news based media sources to entertainment media source. In order to have a more reliable measure for political media's influence we would have to make sure we incorporated a wide variety of media sources. For example, one of our questions that were news based was whether or not the participant received most of his/her news from Fox News Network. An example of one of our entertainment questions was whether or not the participant obtained a majority of his/her political knowledge from television programs such as, The Colbert Report or The Daily Show with John Stewart. This was done after reviewing Markus Prior s research studying the political knowledge gaps between people who prefer news and people who prefer entertainment where he found that content preferences were a better predictor of political knowledge as media choice increased. In his work, Prior explained how contrary to years past where television network's scheduling limited viewers to decide between news or entertainment, news and entertainment are now available around the clock on a variety of television channels (Prior, 2005). This further pushed us to including both traditional news sources as well as more entertainment based television programs in our questionnaire. Methods Participants A convenience sample of 23 students of Hanover College participated in the study. Participants were either from an introductory psychology course or acquaintances
Political Party Knowledge 7 of the researchers. Thirteen percent of participants were from an introductory psychology course and 87% were acquaintances of the researchers. There were 14 participants who were female. There were 9 participants that were male. During our study the participants identified what political party they identified themselves with; the participants were 60% Republican, 22% Democrat, and 17% not affiliated. The average age of participants was 20, with the youngest being 19 and the oldest being 22. Our participants were all Caucasian. Surprisingly we did not have any freshman in our study. Our study consisted of 30% of seniors, 44% juniors, and 26% sophomores. Materials The questionnaire was composed of information obtained from a website shared by the Democratic and Republican parties; www.presidency.ucsb.edu. This website is unbiased and had the parties platforms word-for-word available online. The questionnaire was designed to measure the amount of knowledge the participants had of the political party that they identified themselves with and also their amount of media exposure. The questionnaire contained 22 true/false questions. The first 15 questions of the questionnaire pertained to political knowledge of party's platforms. Then the seven remaining questions pertained to media exposure. Sample true/false questions for the political knowledge section were: Free trade is better than tariffs, Abortion should be legalized, and Welfare is the best way to help poor people. For example, if a Democrat were filling out the questionnaire, they should answer true on the question Abortion should be legalized. If the person answered true they would have been considered as getting the question correct and also that the participant was knowledgeable of the stance on abortion for the Democratic Party.
Political Party Knowledge 8 Procedure Participants were told that the study was designed to explore knowledge of political parties and their positions on key issues. The researchers obtained informed consent from each of the 23 participants. All of the 23 participants were in a big group and most of them were finished reading the informed consent and filling out the questionnaire within five minutes. The questionnaires were anonymous. Participants were given a written debriefing, thanked for their participation, and were dismissed. Results Participant s knowledge of the political party they affiliated themselves with and media exposure were measured using a twenty-two item questionnaire. For each participant, we gave them a percent correct score for the questions about the political parties. This score was based on if the participant chose the correct true/false option for the questions. The possible lowest value for the participants to have was 0% and the highest possible value was 100%. A score of 0% on our questionnaire about their political party s platform indicates that participants did not get any of the questions correct. A score of 100% states that participants got all of the questions correct. The political knowledge part of our questionnaire has a reliability of alpha=0.802. For each participant we also gave them a media exposure score based on the number of questions that the participant answered that was a media exposure for them. The possible lowest value for the participants to have was 0% and the highest possible value was 100%. A media score of 0% states that participants were not exposed to any of the media examples that we listed. A media score of 100% states that participants were exposed to all of the media examples that we listed. This part of our questionnaire has a reliability of alpha=
Political Party Knowledge 9 0.363, indicating that participants who received media exposure from one source were not more or less likely to get media exposure from the other sources we asked about.. We then calculated an average score for the participants for the knowledge questions and also for the media exposure and then compared the scores for Democrats and Republicans. We expected to find that participants who identified themselves at Democratic would have higher percent correct scores than participants who identified themselves as Republican. We ran a t-test for percent correct scores by party. Participants in the Democratic group (M=0.80) were found to have a slightly higher average percent correct score than participants in the Republican group (M=0.65). However, this difference was not significant, t(17)=1.6, p=0.135, see Figure 1. Figure 1. Mean percent correct score by political party. 90 80 Percent Correct 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Democrat Republican We ran a second t-test for media exposure scores by party. Participants in the Democratic group (M=0.6286) were found to have significantly higher media exposure scores than participants in the Republican group (M=0.42), t(17)=2.37, p=0.03, see Figure 2.
Political Party Knowledge 10 Figure 2. Mean media exposure by political party 70 60 Media Exposure 50 40 30 20 10 0 Democrat Republican Finally, we ran a correlation test between percent correct scores and media exposure. We found that the two items had a correlation of r(19)=0.62, p=0.005, see Figure 3. This correlation indicates that high percent correct scores were found with high media exposure scores. Figure 3. Percent correct scores vs. Media Exposure
Political Party Knowledge 11 Discussion The first part of our hypothesis addressed that we thought that Democrats knew more about their party s platforms than Republicans. While Democrats did have a higher mean percent correct than Republicans, the difference was not significant. One possible reason for this is that when we conducted our study, there were roughly three times more Republicans that came to the study than Democrats. If more Democrats would have came to the study and we had a more even representation of each political party, we could have been able to get a better picture of which party is more knowledgeable about their platforms If you were to examine our questionnaire you would find that all the questions are related to politics or media. We also stated some items in reverse. Not all of the Democrat answers were "true" and not all of the Republican answers were "false." Our Cronbach s alpha score is high. These qualities about our questionnaire lead us to believe that our study exhibits some positive validity measures. Our study used a convenience sample and we were not able to gather participants randomly. There were 13% participants from an introductory psychology course and 87% were acquaintances of the researchers. Our questionnaire was only administered to college students. For some of our questions, participants may have tried to portray themselves in a better light, by choosing a different answer than they wanted to. Given that, Societies vary markedly in the degree to which topics such as political opinions and family matters are discussed with strangers (Behling & Law, 2000), it is feasible that some people may have answered some questions in ways they saw as socially desirable
Political Party Knowledge 12 since they knew their answers would be seen by strangers. For example, this can be true for Democrats in the question on abortion, which stated Abortion should be legalized, where they knew that the answer was true that their party believes that abortion should be legalized, but did not want to put the correct answer for fear that the researchers would think that the participants himself/herself supported abortion. Another example of this would be for the Democrats on the question about welfare, which stated, Welfare is the best way to help poor people, to not answer the question as true, even though their party is more inclined to support public assistance to the poor than the republican party. Our flier for advertising for our study stated that it was a political study. From these limitations, we believe that our study lacks in its ability to be generalized to a larger population, is not as representative of the student population as it should be, has clear socially desirable answers, and could include certain types of participants just because of the wording used in our advertising flier. The second part of our hypothesis addresses that we believe that any differences between levels of political knowledge found between the Democrats and Republicans could be due to media exposure. Even though we found a significant difference between level of media exposure between the Democrats and Republicans, we are unable to make any conclusions about this difference or infer that media plays a role in the difference since we did not find a significant difference. Had we assigned participants to political parties we might have been able to conclude a cause and effect relationship between media exposure and political knowledge. But, this would not be possible. However, when we ran a correlation test for percent correct and media exposure, the correlation was high, r=0.67, see Figure 4. This correlation test shows that high levels of media exposure were
Political Party Knowledge 13 highly correlated with high scores on our questionnaire. From this we can conclude that having a high amount of media exposure does affect your level of political knowledge. Within both parties we saw this pattern. This correlation also tells us that 45% of the percent correct scores can be explained by media exposure. Had we assigned participants to political parties we might have been able to conclude a cause and effect relationship between media exposure and political knowledge. We thought that Democrats would be more inclined to pay attention to the media during this election because of the close race between candidates in the primary election for the Democrat party. This idea of ours is supported in Figure 2 showing that Democrats had significantly higher levels of media exposure, thus more influence from the media, than Republicans. We suggest that future researchers should control the amount of media exposure for the participants or have their participants elaborate on their media exposure and give them a qualitative measurement of media exposure. In our questionnaire a participant could have watched only one presidential debate and even for a short amount of time, but this is still considered watching a debate, while another participant could have answered true as well and watched all of the presidential debates completely. The participants did not essentially have the same amount of exposure, but were considered in our test to have the same equal amount of exposure for that question. Future researches should also consider adding more questions to the questionnaire and testing knowledge of more political issues such as energy, the job market, and military beliefs. It would be interesting to see what types of issues people are more aware about and could also study why some issues are better grasped by the people. A last suggestion for future research would be to examine possible gender differences or differences in year in school in
Political Party Knowledge 14 political knowledge. In a political study by McClintock and Turner (1962) there were no gender differences or differences in year in school found. However, it would be interesting to study the population of Hanover students to see our population correlates with the population in McClintock and Turner s study. In conclusion, since political knowledge is a fairly new concept to be measured, there was no generally accepted measure that we were able to use (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1993). After doing our study we concluded that we did not find any significant differences of political knowledge among the Democratic and Republican parties. We were however, surprised to find that media is related to a person s level of political knowledge. An article by Feldman and Kawakami (1991) that we read prior to our research had contrasting evidence as to whether media exposure is linked to significantly higher levels of political knowledge, but our study supported otherwise with an r 2 = 0.45. Our research indicates that high levels of political knowledge are highly correlated with high levels of media exposure. Even though there were no significant differences that were found between Democrats and Republicans in their levels of political knowledge, our study is still successful for the insight that it provides about media exposure and its effect on the Hanover College student population.
Political Party Knowledge 15 References Behling, Orlando and Law, Kenneth S. Translating Questionnaires and Other Research Instruments: Problems and Solutions. London: Sage Publications, 2000. Cillizza, C. (2008, October 7). Obama outspend McCain nearly three to one on television. Washington Post. Retrived November 15, 2008. from http:// http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/10/obamas_spending_edge.html#ch art. Delli Carpini, M. D., & Keeter, S. (1993). Measuring political knowledge: Putting first things first. American Journal of Political Science, 37(4), 1179-1206. Eveland, W. P., & Scheufele, D. A. (2000). Connecting news media use with gaps in knowledge and participation. Political Communication, 17(3), 215-237. Feldman, L. (2008). Confusion or enlightenment?: How exposure to disagreement moderates the effects of political discussion and media use on candidate knowledge. Communication Research, 35(1), 61-87. Feldman, O., & Kawakami, K. (1991). Media use as predictors of political behavior: The case of Japan. Political Psychology, 12, 65-80. Mann, S. (1999). What the survey of American college freshmen tells us about their interest in politics and political science. Political Science & Politics, 32(2), 263 269. McClintock, C. G., & Turner, H. A. (1962). The impact of college upon political knowledge, participation, and values. Human Relations, 15(2), 163-176.
Political Party Knowledge 16 Prior, M. (2005). News vs. entertainment: How increasing media choice widens gaps in political knowledge and turnout. American Journal of Political Science, 49(3), 577-592. Wells, S. D., & Dudash, E. A. (2007). Wha'd'ya know?: Examining young voters' political information and efficacy in the 2004 election. American Behavioral Scientist, 50(9), 1280-128.
Political Party Knowledge 17 Appendix A Informed Consent Form This research is being conducted by Griffin Liford, Sarah Smith, and Emily Fox, all current students in Dr. Bill Altermatt s research and design statistics course at Hanover College. The experiment in which you are asked to participate is designed to examine whether or not you are aware of how the political party you identify yourself with stands on key issues in the upcoming current election. You will receive a questionnaire. After filling out the questionnaire, you will be debriefed. The entire experiment will not take more than 20 minutes. There are no known risks involved in being in this study, beyond those of everyday life. The information you provide during the experiment is completely anonymous; at no time will your name be associated with the response you give. If you have any questions about what you will be doing in the study or about the study itself, feel free to ask them now or at any other time during your participation. If you have any questions after the study, please contact any three of us at lifordw10@hanover.edu, smiths10@hanover.edu, and foxe10@hanover.edu. I acknowledge that I am participating in this study of my own free will. I understand that I may refuse to participate or stop participating at any time. Incomplete participation will not result in credit for participating, but I may complete an alternative assignment of equal time commitment in order to receive credit. If I wish, I will be given a copy of this consent form. Name Date
Political Party Knowledge 18 Appendix B Questionnaire Gender: Race: Age: Year in School: Are you registered to vote? Political party affiliation (circle one): Republican Democrat Affiliated with another party Not affiliated with a party Corresponding with your self-identified political party affiliation, respond to the following statements based on that party s platform: 1. Free trade is better than tariffs (imposed taxes) 2. Abortion should be legalized. 3. Marijuana should be decriminalized. 4. Businesses and farms should operate without government subsidies. 5. Law-abiding citizens should be allowed to carry concealed handguns.
Political Party Knowledge 19 6. Government programs help people more than cutting taxes. 7. There should be a military draft. 8. All foreign aid should be privately funded. 9. Security is more important than civil liberties. 10. Regulations on our natural resources should be increased. 11. Social Security should be privatized. 12. There should be taxpayer funded vouchers to send children to the public or private school of their choice. 13. Corporate income taxes should be lowered. 14. Healthcare is the right of every citizen regardless of income. 15. Welfare is the best way to help poor people. 16. Media (television, internet, newspapers, magazines, etc.) plays a large influence on your gaining knowledge of the political parties. 17. You receive most of your news from FOX News Network.
Political Party Knowledge 20 18. You obtain a majority of your political knowledge from television programs such as The Colbert Report or The Daily Show with John Stewart. 19. You watched the Presidential and/or Vice-Presidential Debates. 20. You ve participated in an online election straw poll (survey). 21. You ve attended a political rally. 22. You have visited your political party s online website. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=78545 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=78283
Political Party Knowledge 21 Appendix C Debriefing Form The study in which you just participated was designed to measure the amount of knowledge that Hanover College students of the Democratic and Republican parties have about their own party s beliefs and stances on key issues. We are trying to detect any differences in the amount of knowledge that students of the Democratic and Republican parties possess. The questionnaire that you filled out was designed to gather information about age, gender, whether or not you are registered to vote, and political party. We expect to find that participants that identify themselves as Democrat will be more knowledgeable on their party s stances on key issues than participants that self-identify as Republican. Please do not discuss this study with other potential participants until the semester is over. If people know what we re testing before the study begins, they may respond differently or prepare answers, jeopardizing our results. As soon as the results from this study are available, you may read about them at the following website: http://vault.hanover.edu/~altermattw/methods/reports.html If you have any questions or comments about this research, please contact the researchers at any of the following email addresses: lifordw@hanover.edu foxe@hanover.edu smiths10@hanover.edu If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact our instructor, Dr. Bill Altermatt at altermattw@hanover.edu.