Pictured above: Applied Political Behavior Class Preparing to Survey UF Students
What encouraged UF students to vote in the national election?
How does participation in Greek organizations affect how UF students think of political behavior? Does political attitudes and participation change the longer students are at UF?
These are some of the questions students in the Fall 2024 Applied Political Behavior explored in their own study. Throughout the semester, the class developed their research questions about Gator voting behavior and designed their own survey to answer their questions. Surveying at three locations with different recruitment strategies, the class found that Gators who did not view voting as a civic duty were ultimately less likely to vote in the national election. Read more below to find out what learned through the process of surveying at three different locations on election day 2024!
Class Experience in Collecting Survey Data
Our class chose three different strategies for collecting data for our survey. Throughout this project, we found persistence and marketing were most important to collect data. Collecting data requires persistence. Being persistent in choosing the correct questions to ask, being persistent in getting people- who likely do not want to be bothered with a survey- to take the survey and accurately answer the questions. Whether it was standing in a high-traffic area or walking around to people sitting at tables minding their own business, every survey group needed persistence to gather this data properly. Along with this persistence, marketability was equally needed. From our posters to incentives, to telling participants that the survey was no longer than two minutes or for a class assignment, by being purposeful with how we explained the survey, every group realized they were able to gain more participants.
No Incentives Surveying at Reitz Union
There were a couple of unique aspects of the data collection at the Reitz Union. We learned about the immense preparation that goes on behind the scenes to make the in-field data collection succeed. It was mildly difficult without any sort of incentive, however, the location was fairly ideal. There was a unique element to this day - it being election day may have resulted in more individuals present in the areas sampled, and this included various student organizations that were willing to participate. Most people were also not in a rush to be somewhere, so they were more amenable to listening. Using keywords such as “class project”, and “for a grade”, allowed for individuals to sympathize with us, and were also a good way to get people to listen and help.
Akriti Kartik, Yasmine Lindsey, & Ryan Hershkowitz Survey UF Students near Reitz Union
Airheads at Turlington
The survey's short and concise format was essential for engaging students, especially those walking with headphones on, and the incentive offered played a significant role in boosting participation, though some completed it without it. Conducted just before the election, the survey saw high participation from politically active student groups. Notably, women were more inclined to participate, possibly due to two women-centered organizations in the surveying area, which may have biased our sample. Additionally, a large gathering around a religious speaker, attracting politically active individuals, likely increased our responses from those engaged in politics.
Lauren Ronson & Chrissa Oommen hand out Airheads
Lucca Carlson (Undergraduate TA) & Makenzi Torres Recruit Participants
Cookies at Marston
We expected the cookie incentive to encourage students to take the survey, however, a fair amount of students were willing to take the survey without taking the cookies. Students may have taken the survey without an incentive because they resonated with us being students and conducting the survey for a class project. Unexpected factors came about during the collection of our survey data, such as a religious speaker who was discussing politics, which attracted the attention of many students and could potentially increase the number of politically engaged students. Another interesting aspect of data collection that we found was that sometimes students would pass the first poster with the survey and reject the invitation to fill out the survey but agree to the second outreach opportunity, which could be a result of repeated exposure to the survey or the discomfort of saying no twice.
Julien Gibson & Danny Cen collect surveys for cookies
Ethan Clifford & Rachel Sobel give UF students cookies for their thoughts
What did we find?
As a class, we were most interested in whether Greek life affects voting behavior and attitudes. We asked students how they described their political views, ranging from 1 (very liberal) to 5 (very conservative). Based on our data, we found that students in Greek life were slightly less liberal than those students who were not in Greek life. However, most of our sample of UF students leaned somewhat liberal (2.34). Additionally, students in Greek life were more likely to indicate they had voted in the national election. 88% of UF students not in Greek Life indicated they would vote compared to 95% of UF students in Greek Life.
We also asked students whether they believed they would neglect their civic duty if they did not vote ranging from strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1). Higher values indicate students believe voting is an important civic duty, and lower scores suggest students do not strongly associate voting with a personal sense of civic duty.
Using this survey item, we found that students in Greek Life were, on average, more likely to think of voting as a civic duty than UF students outside of Greek Life. Together, this descriptive analysis was in line with our class hypothesis that students in Greek Life were socialized to think of voting as a civic duty and would, therefore, vote more on average than non-Greek Life students
We were also interested to see if there was a difference between class standing and motivations for voting Specifically, we wanted to see if there was a difference in how UF students view voting by class standing and their voting behavior. The below figure shows that the vast majority of UF students who voted, regardless of their class standing, believed that voting is an important civic duty. Those UF students who did not vote had different attitudes toward voting by class cohort. First-year undergraduate students, on average, appear similar to all UF students who voted in believing voting is an important civic duty. Third-year students, in particular, are less likely to believe, on average, that voting is an important civic duty. We also found that fifth-year students and beyond who did not plan to vote did not seem to agree that voting is an important civic duty.
What did we conclude?
Overall, we found evidence that viewing voting as a civic duty might be an important predictor of UF student voting behavior. This is important as we found differences by class year and Greek Life participation. Getting Gators to vote might mean helping them see voting as an important civic duty.