CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 RESEARCH DESIGN
1.1.3 M ETHODOLOGY
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4) Do Taiwanese students taking the survey believe that is important for both Taiwanese and Hong Kongers to support each other’s claims to increase the power/intensity/to be more feasible
1.1.3 Methodology
The present epistemological study will be searching for qualitative data taken from random sample of Taiwanese university student of three public universities. The main research interest is to analyze if the collaboration of two social movements of two countries (Hong Kong or Taiwan) can create a bridge in the recognition of the mutual struggle for democracy, identity, self-determination and rejection of a common foe (PRC). This approach has its base on the theory the Social Movements Impact theory, based on Doug McAdam’s interactive model of collective action, in a Robert D. Putman’s "Two Level-game" case as suggested by Donatella della Porta and Hanspeter Kriesi. Thus, following this guideline the present study will be divided as follows.
The first part of the present thesis will based its research in consultation of previous studies and statistics to generate an overview of the socio-political situation lived in these countries. In this way the study will provide a perspective of the context that created the ground for the social movement in Hong Kong and its support in Taiwan.
Second part of the research will consist in applying close-end questionnaire based on a Likert Scale to retrieve the opinion of the students of the three public universities in Taiwan. The main purpose of the questionnaire is to observe how has the Hong Kong movement been perceive by Taiwanese students (independently if they actively supported the movement or not) in regards of the following criteria:
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1) If students:
a) Know what the OCLP is.
b) Recognized and supported the Hong Kong movement’s democratic claims of seeking direct election of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong.
c) Largely perceive that there is a “Hong Kong” identity and if they support the idea behind it.
d) Students felt empathetic and sensed a “communion”7 with protesters in Hong Kong because they were searching for: democracy, identity and rejection of the PRC political system.
2) If the Taiwanese students linked this event as an example to reinforce their rejection of the PRC’s increasing influence.
3) If they see further collaboration with their Hong Kong peers as important to keep their rejection of the PRC and maintain their: democracy, identity and self-determination
Furthermore, the sample of students to be analyze will comply with the following characteristics:
a) Those studying in: National Chengchi University, National Taiwan University and National Normal University.
b) Those who are between the ages of 18-30 years old.8
c) The total size of the sample to be analyze will be as follows:
7 By “communion” the present author refers to the idea of feeling the responsibility to express support for the situation in which people in Hong Kong were.
8 The selection of this sample is based on the population distribution in Taiwan, in which 70 percent of the society has between 15-60 years old, with an average age of 38 years old (National Statistics Republc of China (Taiwan), 2014).
Therefore, the ideas of this group of the population, and future leaders, have a strong weight in the society.
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From the total populations of the universities, here shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Total Number University students in NCCU, NTU and NTNU National Chengchi
The present universities were chosen following the next criterion:
1) These public universities are considering the best within the public system10 of education in Taiwan and several of their members have and will occupy important governmental posts in the future.
2) These universities’ student associations were the most active during the mobilizations.
3) The sample of these universities will show if effectively the influence of the activism is really shared by most part of the students of these universities.
The present survey will aim to set its goals of having a tolerable error margin of 3 – 4% in the number of responses. Therefore, this disposition sets the figures of feature interviewees as follows: University, 2015; National Taiwan University, 2015; National Taiwan Normal University, 2015)
10 The public system in Taiwan comprises the largest pool of students. Therefore, this study is based on this area, as it is more representative of the perspectives on the situation the majority of students have in all Taiwan.
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99% 656 1018
The ultimate aim of the survey is to achieve the maximum level of interviewees as possible to achieve a high level of confidence (in this case 1,784 of students). The application of the survey will be 1 month and 6 days (from June 3th to July 1st) the work will set a minimum acceptance level of 90% confidence with 4% error. In order to achieve this goal the survey will be sent to (+/-) 1,018 students of the selected universities with the help of the central offices in each university. (Custom Insigth, 2015) For the sample to maintain an equitable representation of the total population, interviewees per university will be maintain as symmetrical as possible.
Main variables of the Questionnaire:
1. Democratic protests
The combination of four elements created the “Democratic protests” variable: a) Measurement of the Interest of the interviewee toward social movements happening in the PRC (foreign) and Taiwan (local); b) measurement level of knowledge of the particular case of the Hong Kong movement and the level of importance for the interviewee; c) measurement of the level in which the interviewee felt being awareness, sensitivity, understanding, while experiencing the feeling, thoughts and similar experiences towards those who support the movement by asking his level of
“empathy”.; and d) measurement of the level of pro-activeness in helping democratic social movements in the PRC.
2. Identity
This item was composed by two questions. The first item provides 5 options that combine the two perspectives of identity as argued by Malte Philip Keading:
essentialist and constructivist11. Therefore, the answers provided in two questions
11 According to Kaeding essential and constructivist perspectives can be subdivided into civic and ethno-cultural. From these subdivisions there are three basic perspectives to classify nationalism in Taiwan, which are the following:
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separate and in two differently combined, the following variables: a) bloodline, language, culture, race and territory; b) views the nation as an “imagined political community”. The second question measures in the interviewee acknowledges that a
“Hong Konger identity exists and should be maintained.
3. Taiwan-China Relations
This item uses a combination of elements that can be divided in: socio-political, economy and politics, and social. The “socio-political” item seek to ask the interviewee their opinions if their career options had any connection with cross-strait relations and in this way measure their awareness of the topic and importance they place to it in their daily lives.
The “economy and politics” item, the questions are destined to measure student’s perspective on cross-strait economic relationship between Taiwan and the PRC, economic status of Taiwan and the dangers of an economic interdependence on China for Taiwan’s democracy, sovereignty and the political survival of ROC’s government.
The “social” item has the intention to ask the interviewees to provide their opinion in regards of the hypothetical case of unifying Taiwan with the PRC. Furthermore, they are ask if they agree to create a strong collaboration with the society in Hong Kong to maintain their democracy, identity and self-determination. Lastly it is asked for the students to agree or disagree if in case cross-strait relations are mishandled it could create a new “Hong Kong” out of Taiwan.
These variables will help to confirm if the students see in the Hong Kong society a potential ally who they understand and relate in regards of their present situation.
1) Ethno-cultural nationalism: […] […T]he Taiwanese identity is based on specific historical experiences and perceived cultural differences between the Taiwan people and mainland Chinese[.T]he focus is on the colonial past of the island and its long separation from the China.
2) Multi-ethnic nationalism: […] [T]he Taiwanese nation is a harmonious, democratic and tolerant nation of four ethnic groups, the Mainlanders, the Hoklo, the Hakka, and the aborigines.
3) Political or State nationalism: […] [T]he foundation of a Taiwan nation is in line with the institutions of a liberal state. The rise of the Taiwan identity is seen as directly connected to its geographical and political separation from China and its subsequent democratic development. (Kaeding, 2011)
These perspectives served to mold the propositions offered to Taiwanese students to pick the one closer to their definition to be Taiwanese.
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In order to conduct the sought retrieval of the positions of students, the method chosen would be close-end Likert Scale type of questionnaire. The use of this method stands as the most optimal scheme to analyze qualitative information. Nonetheless, it is important to mention that there are also disadvantages.
First, the advantages of close-end questions lay on the feasibility of coding and interpreting the information. Moreover, the Likert Scale has the sole purpose of being a psychological response scale aiming to retrieve the preferences or degree of agreement of the respondents.
Therefore, interviewees provide responses on a non-comparative approach and unidimensional manner. Despite these advantages, the disadvantage presents when respondents are provided with pre-armed statements that do not exactly reflect their opinion. As Bertram argues, “… there is no way to ensure that participants view the difference between ‘agree’ and ‘completely agree’ ” (Likert Scales …are the meaning of life, 2004). Hence, the responses are approximations of the participant’s perspectives.
However, if the method of open-end questions is preferred challenges may increase.
Although open-end questions provide exact answers of the interviewees, the wide range of variables in these answers makes coding very difficult. Furthermore, answers from open-end questionnaires are challenged in achieving a clear interpretation without recurring to a higher level of assumption through a series of direct and indirect connections (Knapp, 1990; McLeod, 2008). For these reasons, the author of the present study has decided to use the method of close-end Likert scale to interpret the responses.
Finally, the questionnaire will be applied through an online survey using “Google Documents”. The advantages of applying an online survey are the following:
1) It is automatic and provides a real-time access: As respondents respond in real-time, the information is stored and can be access immediately.
2) Rapid deployment: this tool provides the advantage of rapidly reaching the subjects and retrieve the intended information.
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3) Allows flexibility in the process of creating the survey (all types of surveys can be put forward under this tool.
4) Anonymity: as there is no interviewer the respondents feel more confident in providing responses.
Disadvantages:
1) Respondent availability can be limited, as respondents will receive the survey to their emails.
2) Cooperation problems: as many interviewees constantly bombarded by other advertisements may not be interested to respond or end the survey.
3) No interviewer: the lack of a trained person to clarify sections of the survey can produce less reliable data. (Gingery, 2011)
Once acknowledge these disadvantages, the present author proposes the following measures to address the problematic:
1) The survey can also be distributed in social media (like Facebook, twitter, etc.) making the availability of the subjects to increase.
2) The cooperation problems are hard to tackle, but can be reduce by implementing a short questionnaire. A 1 or 1.5 page questionnaire with 15 questions can help reduce this risk.
3) The lack of interviewer can be addressed by making a concise and explicative paragraph of what is required for the respondent to do. As this questionnaire is based on a Likert Scale, the tasks required from the interviewee will be similar in shape and form.
Third and finally, the answers of the questionnaire will serve to draw the final conclusions.
Once the results from the questionnaire are obtained they will be coded and interpreted. As the interpretation shows the results obtain will be compared with hypothesis of the present study to support it or overthrow it.
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