METHODOLOGY & RESULTS (SURVEY)
3.2 Sampling and questionnaire design
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questionnaire online. In the second stage, due to a lack of response, the author then went on to each group and sent individual emails to some users and asked them to forward the link as well. At the same time, the author also asked some friends who are also members of these groups to fill out the online questionnaire and to forward to their friends the link to the questionnaire.
3.2 Sampling and questionnaire design
The survey of this study, which aims to find out the correlations among variables such as the uses of Causes, political efficacy, political knowledge and conventional activism, adopts the method of convenience sampling. Based on a search on Wikipedia, convenience sampling is also known as accidental sampling. This type of sampling usually involves taking a sample from a section of population that is readily accessible.
The main reason for such a choice is the difficulty to reach the users of these groups and to recruit them to participate in the survey. This observation stems from the fact that while attempting to conduct a pre-test of the questionnaire, the number of responses was very low. Despite this, it was still decided that the result of the survey with a low response number can be useful as a reference for the intensive interviews. In other words, the results of the survey and those of the interviews will work complimentarily to answer the research questions.
It should be noted that in spite of the large numbers of members in the selected groups, the number of ‘active’ users is actually considerably smaller in each group.
For example, according to the statistics on the Causes page, as of 2010/4/10, DEFEAT Proposition 8 has only 72 active users. REPEAL Prop 8 has only 34 active users. Don’t eliminate same-sex marriage in California has only 20 active users. One Million for Same-sex Marriage has 2,346 active users. Marriage = Person + Person has 44 active
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users. Legalize Same-sex Marriage has 16 active users. And Support Same Sex Marriage both Gay and Lesbian has only 8 active users. Even though these numbers fluctuate over time, they remain relatively small compared to the total numbers of registered members. This may justify the fact that survey respondents were difficult to find. More discussion regarding a lack of active users will be found in a later chapter.
The questionnaire contains seven parts. The first part asks about demographic information. The second asks about the general uses of Causes. The third asks about the uses of cause groups related to Proposition 8, focusing especially on two types of activities, namely the information retrieval activities and the social networking activities. The fourth asks about political knowledge. The fifth asks about political efficacy. The sixth asks about participation in conventional activism. Finally, the questionnaire ends with an invitation to the intensive interview. To see the questionnaire, please refer to Appendix A.
3.3 Variables
This section introduces the variables presented in the theoretical structure. At the same time, a reliability test among all the items in each part of the questionnaire is also conducted to see if they can be combined to establish indexes for later analysis.
3.3.1 Independent variables Demographic variables
The first set of independent variables in this study are about the demographic information of the users. The study asks about nationality, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, age, level of education, and political stance.
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General uses of Causes
Another set of independent variables are about the activities performed or enacted on cause groups. However, to begin with, the study asks several questions regarding the general uses of Causes, questions such as how familiar users are with Causes, how often they use Causes, and how often they use the cause groups on Proposition 8. In addition to those, it also asks how long a user has used Causes and how many cause groups he is a member of. There are, in total, five questions.
However, a reliability analysis found that when deleting question 4, the reliability rises from Cronbach’s alpha = .515 to Cronbach’s alpha= .888. Therefore, question 4 of this part is deleted. The other four questions are together treated as the “general uses of Causes index”.
Uses of Proposition 8 cause groups
Then, moving on to the uses of cause groups dedicated to Proposition 8, the study asks questions about the activities, such as fundraising, recruiting, awareness, advocacy, and karma, which are available on all cause groups. First of all, certain but not all cause groups are geared toward not only awareness but also donation. For these groups, the function of fundraising allows the users to either donate money or raise funds. The unit of donation and fundraising is US dollars. These two sub concepts are operationalized to be the amount of money donated or raised by a user.
On the users’ main cause page, they not only can see a record of donation made by themselves, but they also know how much their friends have donated, which is known as fundraising.
Next, recruiting is an activity on Causes where users can invite their friends to be part of a cause group. Once a person joins a cause group, either through invitation
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or self-discovery, they will have a choice to post this information on the main personal Facebook page. It is through this information on their personal page that their friends can be exposed to the same cause group. This is a special function on Facebook called News Feed9, where friends of a user are kept updated with the activities a user is involved in. Also, after a person joins a group, he will be given an option to send invitation to his friends on Facebook to join in this group. Through either way, if any of his friends joins the group, he is said to be a recruiter. The unit of recruiting is the number of members.
The third activity available on Causes has to do with awareness. On a cause group page, users may often post links to articles, video clips of relevant subject matters or simply their own stories or experiences. If a user clicks on one of these links and read or watch the material, he is said to perform this action of awareness.
Causes keeps a record of the number of links viewed by a user as well as the number of links viewed by his friends. The unit of awareness in this study is the frequency of links viewed and posted. Besides viewing, this study will also look at the number links posted by a user as their effort to raise awareness. Therefore, this concept is divided into awareness giving and awareness receiving.
The next activity on Causes is advocacy. It’s an activity through which a user can sign a petition and help gather signatures for the petition in order to appeal to a certain target audience. The units of advocacy are the number of petitions signed by a user and the number of signatures gathered by a user. For the purpose of this study, a new concept is named signature gathering.
The last function of Causes is karma. On Causes, a user can send thanks to another user for joining the group or for recruiting someone to be part of the group
9 A News Feed is a list of updates on a user’s own Facebook home page, which will show updates about those people who are on his or her friend’s list, as well as odd advertisements.
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through the use of karma. The unit of karma is the number of thanks sent and received. As a result, the concept is divided into karma thanks sent and karma thanks received.
Besides these functions and activities listed on Causes’ main page, there is also a discussion board in every cause group, where users can initiate a discussion and/or join in the discussion by posting their views on the issue. For the analysis in this study, the unit of discussion board use is the number of postings as well as the frequency viewing on the discussion board. Therefore, the concept is divided into discussion positing and discussion viewing.
For the purpose of this study, the activities above are divided into two
categories, namely the social networking activities and information retrieval activities.
Activities belonging to the first group have a proactive nature, meaning a user has to produce or initiate an action. Examples include fundraising, donation, recruiting, posting links, clips or stories, signing petitions, gathering signatures, sending thanks other users. These are questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 in Part 3 of the questionnaire. This category has a high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha= .892) and is treated as the “social networking index”.
Activities belonging to the second group have a reactive nature, meaning a user has to respond to information on Causes. Examples include reading or watching information in the links, clips, or personal stories as well as viewing the discussion.
These are questions 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. This category also has a high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha= .916) and is referred to as the “information retrieval index”.
Political efficacy and political knowledge
As shown in the theoretical structure presented in Chapter 2, there are two other independent variables in this study. They are respectively political efficacy and
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political knowledge.
First of all, issue specific political knowledge is defined as the level of knowledge a user has about the issue and relevant topics. In the case of this current study, the issue is Proposition 8 regarding same-sex marriage in the USA. This study will ask a series of 8 questions regarding Proposition 8 and relevant issue topics to assess the users’ level of knowledge on this issue. The questions, as presented in the fourth part of the questionnaire, are mostly about details regarding dates, people, and statistics about Proposition 8. These questions are devised by the author with the reference to relevant documents and information on the Internet. For every question answered right, one point will be given, so the scores vary from 0 to 8. The final score represent the subject’s level of political knowledge regarding Proposition 8 and same-sex marriage legislation. The reliability among all the items in this group is very low (Cronbach’s alpha= .144).
Next, political efficacy regarding Proposition 8 and relevant issue topics is defined as the level of confidence in one’s effort in making a difference. This study will ask the users to assess their own level of confidence in their ability to change the status quo of Proposition 8 and relevant issues. This study uses a list of statements adapted from their original from Campbell et al. (1954). Please see the questionnaire in Appendix A for the statements. These statements are adapted from Campbell et al.
(1954). The subjects will be asked to answer either agree or disagree for each of the above statements. If they answer agree to statements 1, 3, 4, and 5 and disagree to statement 2, then they are considered to be politically efficacious. For statements 1, 3, 4 and 5, for each statement agreed, one point will be given, and for each statement disagreed, 0 point will be given. On the other hand, one point will be given if statement 2 is disagreed, and 0 point will be given if it is agreed. In the end, the final score represents the subject’s level of political efficacy. The reliability among the
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items in this group is also quite low (Cronbach’s alpha= .375).
3.3.2 Dependent variable
The dependent variable in this study is about the participation in conventional activism related to Proposition 8. This study asks the users about their experiences in which they have involved themselves in the following Proposition 8 or same-sex marriage related activities: protests, parades, rallies, sit-ins, demonstrations, petitions, or discussions. It also asks them about affiliation with organizations, volunteer work, and recruitment. For the first two questions, the answers range from
‘none’ to ‘more than 10’, with ‘none’ scoring 0 and ‘more than 10’ scoring 4. For question 3, the answers range from ‘none’ to ‘more than $US 201’, with ‘none’
scoring 0 and ‘more than $US 201’ scoring 5. For questions 4, 5, and 7, the answers range from ‘never’ to ‘everyday’, with ‘never’ scoring 0 and ‘everyday’ scoring 5. For question 6, the answers range from ‘none’ to ‘more than 4’, with ‘none’ scoring 0 and
‘more than 4’ scoring 4. For question 8, the answers range from ‘none’ to ‘more than 16’, with ‘none’ scoring 0 and ‘more than 16 scoring 4’. Please see the questionnaire for the questions. The reliability of the items in this group is high (Cronbach’s alpha= .884).
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TABLE 3-1: Correspondence between Variables and Questionnaire Items Independent Variables
Variable Name Questionnaire Section Numbers of Items
Demographics Part 1 (Q1-Q7) 7
Political knowledge Part 4 (Q1-Q8) 8
Political efficacy Part 5 (Q1-5) 5
Dependent Variable
Variable Name Questionnaire Section Number of Items
Conventional activism Part 6 (Q1-Q8) 8