A Study on Association Between Political Beliefs and Courses Selection

This report investigates the association between students' political beliefs and their chosen courses of study, focusing on the faculties of sciences and humanities. A survey was conducted with 100 participants, and the data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, including the c...Read More

ASSOCIATION BETWEEN POLITICAL BELIEFS
AND EDUCATIONAL COURSES

Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................1
Problem statement..................................................................................................................................1
Objectives of the study............................................................................................................................2
Research question...................................................................................................................................2
Hypotheses..............................................................................................................................................2
Research methodology................................................................................................................................2
Research design.......................................................................................................................................2
Data collection.........................................................................................................................................2
Data analysis............................................................................................................................................3
Results.........................................................................................................................................................3
Descriptive statistics................................................................................................................................3
Inferential statistics.................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................7
Recommendations.......................................................................................................................................7
References...................................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The education system of any country can be defined from the perspective of formal systems
(Sanprasert 6). This incorporates early childhood education, primary education, secondary
education, tertiary and university education. As noted by (Alexandre 4), more external factors
than internal factors affect tertiary and university education. In most cases, these external factors
dictate what normally happens within the institutions. Some of these external factors include
geographical, socio-cultural beliefs, religion and political affiliation. Politics is thought to have
an impact on the courses that students pursue in tertiary and university institutions.
Political administration and affiliation plays a big role in the education sector. Different political
spectra have different political philosophies and thereby have different levels of influence on
daily way of life, including educational pursuit (Fott 2). For instance, a political party that
believes in the philosophy of economic emphasis could result to more of its supporters taking
courses in the field of economics. However, a political party believing in the philosophy of
socialism could have several of its supporters taking courses in the field of sociology, political
science and other social sciences (Jones 7).
Problem statement
Several factors affect the general education system in a country, and more specifically the
courses that students pursue at tertiary or university level. Some of these factors include
historical, religious and political ideologies (de 5). This study therefore tried to investigate the
association between courses done by students and their political ideologies.

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Objectives of the study
The main objective of this study is to investigate whether or not students’ courses of study are
related to the types of political beliefs they hold. The study tries to explore whether an
association exists between college/university course and political ideologies.
Research question
Based on the objective of the study, the below research question guided the study;
Does there exist an association between political beliefs and courses done by student?
Hypotheses
Based on the above research question, the following null and alternative hypotheses are
formulated;
H0: There is exists no association between political beliefs held by students and courses done by
students.
H1: There exists an association between political beliefs and courses done by students.
Research methodology
Research design
Descriptive research design was employed for this study. A random sampling survey was
employed for collection of data.
Data collection
Data was collected by administering questionnaires to a random sample of 100 participants, from
the faculties of sciences and humanities. Quantitative data was collected from the survey.
Data analysis
Quantitative techniques were used for analyzing the data. Data was analyzed for both descriptive
and inferential statistics. The inferential statistics tool used was the chi square test for association
of variables.

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Analysis was carried out using SPSS.
Results
Descriptive statistics
Political affiliation
Of the surveyed individuals, 47% belonged to the Conservative party while 53% belonged to the
Liberal party, forming the majority.
Political party
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid Conservative 47 47.0 47.0 47.0
Liberal 53 53.0 53.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0
Faculty
42 5 of the surveyed students responded to be taking courses in the faculty of humanities while
the majority of the respondents representing 58% responded to be taking courses in the faculty of
sciences.
Faculty
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid Humanities 42 42.0 42.0 42.0
Sciences 58 58.0 58.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0
Political party * Faculty Crosstabulation

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Count
Faculty
TotalHumanities Sciences
Political party Conservative 9 38 47
Liberal 33 20 53
Total 42 58 100
Cross tabulation analysis depicts that 38 out of 47 students who belonged to the Conservative
party took science courses while 9 took courses related to humanities.
Of the 53 surveyed students who belonged to the Liberal party, 33 took courses in humanities
while 20 took courses in sciences.
Inferential statistics
Manual calculation
We conduct chi square test of association on the political affiliation and faculty data.
Political party * Faculty Crosstabulation
Count
Faculty
TotalHumanities Sciences
Political party Conservative 9 38 47
Liberal 33 20 53
Total 42 58 100
Test statistic
The test statistic for calculating chi-square is;

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Where, Oi is the observed frequencies and Ei the expected frequencies (Martín 13).
We proceed to calculate the expected values as follows;
E ( 9 ) = 47∗42
100 =19.74
E ( 38 ) = 47∗58
100 =27.26
E ( 33 ) = 53∗42
100 =22.26
E ( 20 )= 53∗58
100 =30.74
We then proceed to calculate the chi square statistic which is;
¿ ( 9−19.74 ) 2
19.74 + ( 38−27.26 ) 2
27.26 + ( 33−22.26 ) 2
22.26 + ( 20−30.74 ) 2
30.74
¿ 5.84+ 4.23+5.18+3.75=19.
We compare the chi square calculated to chi square tabulated at 1 degree of freedom and 5%
significance level.
Chi square calculated is greater than the chi square tabulated implying that we reject the null
hypothesis in favor of the alternative.
Using SPSS
Chi square test using SPSS outputs the following tables.
Political party * Faculty Crosstabulation
Faculty Total

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Humanities Sciences
Political party Conservative Count 9 38 47
% within Political party 19.1% 80.9% 100.0%
% within Faculty 21.4% 65.5% 47.0%
Liberal Count 33 20 53
% within Political party 62.3% 37.7% 100.0%
% within Faculty 78.6% 34.5% 53.0%
Total Count 42 58 100
% within Political party 42.0% 58.0% 100.0%
% within Faculty 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Chi-Square Tests
Value df
Asymptotic
Significance (2-
sided)
Exact Sig. (2-
sided)
Exact Sig. (1-
sided)
Pearson Chi-Square 19.009a 1 .000
Continuity Correctionb 17.280 1 .000
Likelihood Ratio 19.899 1 .000
Fisher's Exact Test .000 .000
N of Valid Cases 100
a. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 19.74.
b. Computed only for a 2x2 table
P value obtained equals 0.000 which is less than 0.05. this implies that we reject the null
hypothesis at the 5 % level of significance in favor of the alternative hypothesis.
Based on the manually calculated and the SPSS calculated results, we can conclude that there
exists an association between students’ political beliefs and the courses they take in college or
the university.
Conclusion
Results of the study have shown that indeed there is an association between political beliefs and
courses done by students. It has been found out that majority of students who are allied to the

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Liberal party would prefer courses in the Humanities faculty while students allied to the
conservative party would prefer courses in the sciences faculty. These findings agree with the
findings of (Brajkovic 7) who argued that people tend to study what is related to their social life.
These observations could be attributed to the fact that supporters of the Liberal party would like
to use radicalization in order to bring reforms. Ways of bringing these reforms can be learnt in
humanity courses rather than science courses. However, conservatives believe that a country or
organization can best be served by existing laws and reforms. Thereby, they do not end up taking
courses that teach on democratic and political reforms. Majority of allies of the conservative
party would therefore prefer courses in the faculty of sciences rather than humanities.
Recommendations
This research just dealt with two faculties; the faculty of sciences and the faculty of humanities.
The study therefor recommends that future research should try to explore association between
political affiliation and courses taken by students across different faculties for example
engineering, agriculture and medicine.
References
Alexandre Pais, Paola Valero. "Mathematics Education and Contemporary Theory." Educational Studies
in Mathematics (2012): 3-5.
Brajkovic, Lucia. "Human capital investment or academic marginalism? Understanding the influence of
political economy on higher education in post-socialist Europe." Policy Reviews in Higher
Education (2018): 7.
de, Maria Jose. "Factors Affecting Student Choice of Career in Science and Engineering: parallel studies
in Australia, Canada, China, England, Japan and Portugal." Research in Science & Technological
Education (2011): 5.
Fott, David. "Political Philosophy in the Twentieth Century || John Dewey and the Mutual Influence of
Democracy and Education." The Review of Politics (2009): 2.

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Jones, Ken. "Conservative Party Education Policies: 1976–1997: the Influence of Politics and Personality
by Daniel Callaghan." (2010): 7.
Martín Andrés, Sánchez Quevedo. "On the validity condition of the chi-squared test in 2×2 tables."
(2015): 13.
Sanprasert, Navaporn. "The application of a course management system to enhance autonomy in
learning English as a foreign language." (2010): 6.
Appendix
Survey questionnaire
Gender:
Age:
Institution:
Faculty:

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Course:
Political affiliation:
Survey responses
Political party Faculty
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences

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Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences

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Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Humanities

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Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Sciences

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Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Liberal Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Sciences
Conservative Faculty of Humanities
Liberal Faculty of Humanities
Conservative Faculty of Sciences