Russell J. Dalton posits that perceptions are a reality to the voters if they use them in making electoral choices. Holding to our hypothesis, that indicators that hold prominence are therefore indicators of strength we surveyed 103 undergraduate students to measure what their perceptions were on 12 indicators of strength.
Inspiration for this methodology stems from the American National Election Studies (ANES). This survey asks, “Why does America vote as it does on Election Day?” With funding from the National Science Foundation and in collaboration with Stanford University and the University of Michigan, the ANES seeks to measure variables that will provide researchers with high quality data on voting, public opinion, and political participation that will, in turn, provide the sought after explanations of electoral outcomes. This dataset is both critical and unique. Unique because despite the vast number of respondents (n = 5914), the survey collection method collects interviews both face-to-face and online; Critical because the respondents are ordinary citizens of voting age, whose answers provide perspective on actions that determine electoral outcomes. Since 1948, this survey is conducted post-election interviews in biennial national elections and pre- AND post-election interviews during years with presidential elections. The ANES boasts an impressive post-election, re-interview rate of 93%.
The remaining indicators have means separated by less than a tenth of a point. Due to the number of indicators and the number of surveys, this result was disappointing but not surprising. Observation of the modes, however, provided a more dynamic view of how the surveyed college students ranked each indicator. While the averages show similar measures, the mode allows us to observe how each indicator was ranked most often. The indicators of Coast Line and Population Distribution/Urbanization both have modes of 10 or higher.
The second objective of this survey was to see if one could, as they say judge a book by its cover. Could we statistically say that a student of one UWF college is more likely to place an indicator of strength higher or lower than any other indicators?
The results say no. The correlations between UWF Colleges and indicators of strength do not present strong measurements to support this hypothesis. However, the highlighted measures in the table above show statitsically significant correlations. Weak though the may be, statistical significance suggests that students within the UWF College of Science and Engineering are less likely to rank the indicator of Historical Landmarks as a Florida strength, r(103)= -.244, p<.01. Similarly, albeit weak, the results suggest with a measure of statistical significance that students from the UWF College of Arts, Social Science & Humanities, are more likely to rank State Education as a Florida Strength, r(103)= .168, p<.05.
