Voters' Awareness of Parties' Tuition Fee Policies: Influencing Vote Choice? - Essay Sample

Introduction

The research question for this study is, does awareness of party positions on tuition fees affect vote choice? The research seeks to find if there is truth in the claim that voters' choices influenced by the perception of parties' stand on tuition fees. Most political parties seeking election into office are often promising to abolish or reduce tuition fees (Smyth, 2019). But what is really behind this? Does voter's awareness of these promised policies on tuition fees influence his or her vote choice? In some other countries, this has proved to have a significant impact on voter's choice. An example of the New Zealand 2017 elections. The labor party was elected into office, promising its citizens a three-year fees-free post-secondary education.

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Studying this will help point out what the relationship is between a voter's awareness of political parties' stand on tuition fees and the voter's choice. There exist contradicting theories about the subject matter. One can argue that not being aware of a political party' s stance on tuition fees is not essential since the demand elasticity for higher education is low. It should mean political policies on tuition fees changes should not have such a significant impact on the outcome of an election. The most interested people on political parties' stand on tuition fees are those people from a low socio-economic background, which will bring us to the hypothesis of this study (Gine & Ghazala, (2018). This study will help clear the contracting theories about the influence of political parties' tuition fees policies and vote choice.

For this study, I will test the truth of the hypothesis, receiving information about the party's positions on tuition fees will affect vote choice, but only among the less wealthy. As said, most people that I think will be affected by the political party's tuition fees policies are ones from the poor socio-economic background. Not attending higher education or dropping from a college correlate with financial pressures. Being aware of how a particular party stands on tuition fees may have or may not have an impact on who a voter decides to pick, but only to those who are well financially. It is the reason this hypothesis is appropriate.

The target population for this study will be university students. Students are appropriate for this study, as tuition fees directly relate to them. In Britain 2005, Liberal Democrats were joined by conservatives in promising to banish tuition fees. Such implies that they were influenced by the claim that the vote choice of citizens is influenced by the political party's stance on tuition fees. Students could potentially determine what the next government complexion would be. They say that students are hugely motivated by political policies that directly affect them (Garzia et al., 2017). Political party stance on tuition fees is one such policy that affects them. There are many contradicting theories, hence the importance of this study. By clearly stating whether or not the vote choice is influenced by the political stance of a political party, the air will be cleared.

Experimental Design

To test the hypothesis stated above, we will have to perform an experiment that will test the impact the variables have on the outcome. The target population for this experiment is the university students in the United Kingdom. The experiment will be objective, focusing on the hypothesis. The design will focus on priming, and the participants will be asked a series of short sentences questions relating to their vote choice and political parties' stance on tuition fees. The design will have a control group and two treatment groups. It will contain two completely different groups.

The treatments for this experiment are two, one is the manifesto statement, and the other is social media posts by party representatives. The participants in one group will be asked a series of questions relating to how much they are aware of the manifesto statements of political parties. A series of factors will be involved. Such is correlated to the hypothesis being tested. Being aware of a manifesto means the voter is knowledgeable about the political party stance on tuition fees, which may or may not influence his vote choice (Seeberg et al., 2017). The second treatment, social media posts by party representatives, also relates to the hypothesis, this will also contain a series of factors. Most people use social media; coming across a party's post about its stance on tuition fees is easier on social media. The control condition for this experiment will be received no treatment, which will remain the same throughout the experiment. The control will help increase the accuracy of the outcome. This group will have no treatment, no social media posts, or a manifesto statement. The importance of this is that we also need to determine what the voter's choice will be if the voter is not aware of the political party's stance on tuition fees.

The assignment of people to treatment groups will be done using randomization. Random, an android, and iOS application will be used. The minimum number is set to 1 and the maximum number to 3. There will be an ENUMERATOR who will be doing the interview and a RECORDER to identify respondents and record everything down. The dependent variable for the experiment is on a scale of 1 to 5, who would you vote for with elections? The measurement of this dependent variable will be quantitative. Numbers with a range of 1 to 5 will be used, five being very likely the voter will cast for a particular political party and one being very unlikely.

One limitation of this study is that it may be more time consuming, a survey needs to be first conducted, with the target population being university students in the United Kingdom, this may prove to be too time-consuming (Tilley, Neundorf & Hobolt, 2018). Another limitation is that the demand characteristics may bias the outcome of the experiment hence becoming confounding variables. Also, it is only less control over extraneous variables, which may lead to the results being bias. Such makes it hard for another interested researcher to enhance or replicate the study precisely in a similar way.

Sample

As mentioned, the target population for this study is university students in the United Kingdom. The sample population is taken from the broader population of UK students, and the sample population will be students at the Royal Holloway University of London. This sample is used as it is easily accessible and will cut on the time used to experiment. The number of observations is 226. As earlier mentioned, the technique used for sampling is randomization using the random application found on the Play Store and App Store. A questionnaire will be used for sampling, where the first column will contain the respondent number. Three different types of questionnaires are used where a respondent is picked for a particular questionnaire basing on the random number. One limitation of this sample is that the target population is university students in the United Kingdom, yet the sample contains students from just one university, RHUL. Such is to avoid extra costs and save on time; however, it may increase bias on the results. Another limitation is that the sample size is small. The margin of error and the sample size are directly proportional, and small sample size reduces the study's confidence level, which increases the margin of error.

Analysis

The hypothesis test for this study proved right, receiving information about the party's position on tuition fees will affect vote choice, but only among the less wealthy. I used RStudio for the analysis of the data. In my study, I looked at the socio-economic status of the respondents and found the mean of vote choice of rich people and those who are not wealthy. Among the rich people, I put them into the three different treatment groups; control, manifesto, and social media, for which I used twitter. I also did the same with the ones who are not wealthy. I made a plot for each part and ran regressions for each. I also did this for the other variables, like occupation and gender.

The results showed that among the rich people, the awareness of the voters on the political parties' stand on tuition fees did not have an impact or alter their perceptions on whom they should vote for at the elections. Such was not the case with those who are not productive. There was a considerable difference between the two. Among those people who are not productive, their voting choice was influenced by what the political party would do about tuition fees once in office. When the mean vote choices of rich people and those who are not wealthy are compared, the difference is visible.

I don't believe these responses reflect the real truth on voter's choice of a leader or a political party. Although in some rare cases, these responses may prove to be accurate, it is not always the case. The New Zeeland case is one example where the voter's choice is impacted by the awareness of the voter on the political party's stance on school fees. Citizens' perceptions are not altered by parties' positions in response to manifesto statements of the political party. Also, it is reported that voters put closer together the parties that form coalitions on scales basing on ideology than the parties that do not have alliances. (Adams and Ezrow, 2014). It suggests the citizens' vote choice is based on the coalition composition and not on the manifestos; hence I believe these responses are wrong. The one source of bias or imprecision that has led to this incorrect response is the small under covered sample size used for the experiment. Using just one university when the population is large and contains many universities makes the results bias.

Reflection

This study was successful but not without ups and downs. I learned a lot from this study, I gained new skills, insights, and I also learned a lot about university students and their political beliefs. I got to test my interests and motivation, strengths, etc. In my general reaction to this study, it was a great experience, and I want to build on this, make corrections on where things did not go so well, and have an even better experience next time. The study instilled an investigative mindset and a passion for research, which can only be useful in the future.

Most of what I expected to happen during this experiment happened. I had respondents who gave their corporation entirely and other respondents who did not want to corporate. I made sure to begin all my interviews with an ethical statement, and they were all held face to face. Those who did not wish to consent to the survey were many. I thanked them and went to the next respondent. The high number of people who did not want to agree to the study is what surprised me the most during the whole research.

On things that went well during the study, one is I got the expected results. I can confidently say the results had a good accuracy even though the results were not perfect as a result of the various limitations on the sample size. My expectations were met. It reflected the exact relationship between student's awareness of political parties' stance on tuition fees and their vote choice. Another thing is learning new things and pushing myself. It is by being out there conducting a survey, talking to people, and trying to get accurate results that pushed me. It drove me out of my comfort zone.

Also, some things did not go well during the experiment. One of them is a limited schedule. With all the busy schedule at school, there was a challenge managing between performin...