The political decision of citizens in any country is usually influenced by the situation within the country and by the events at the international political arena. From this point, it is important to examine the dependence between the success and failure of the definite political events and people’s further decisions to participate in the similar events or support political projects.
The research question on which the project is based depends on the necessity to examine the possible connection and dependence between the people’s vision of the Arabian Spring’s successfulness and their willingness to participate in protests. To study the research question, it is important to focus on the associated hypotheses.
According to the first hypothesis, if citizens perceive the Arabian Spring as unsuccessful, they are disappointed with its results and they are not ready to participate in protests because of the focus on the failure and disappointment. Furthermore, those citizens who discuss the Arabian Spring as successful are inclined to participate in protests and support them because of the focus on the strengths.
To examine the research question and support the hypotheses, it is necessary to work out effective survey questions for questionnaires which are developed to study the citizens’ vision of the problem and their perceptions as well as the particular features of demographics which are important to present the description of the sample.
That is why, survey questions are developed to state the gender and age characteristics of participants along with their education, occupational and socioeconomic status which can influence the citizens’ perception of the political events and their activity in relation to participation in the political life of the country.
From this perspective, it is important to learn persons’ age, gender, religion, education, occupational and socioeconomic status along with political preferences and sharing the ideas of the definite parties which can affect the discussion of the political situation and perception of the Arabian Spring with the further participation in protests.
The successfulness of the sampling procedures depends on the quality of the questions and on activity of participants while answering the questions and choosing the concrete answers instead of preferring not to answer a question. The frequency of choosing the concrete answers to questions is higher than of preferring not to answer a question, and this fact allows speaking about the credibility and usefulness of the answers received.
From this point, the sampling procedures can be discussed as successful. Paying attention to the specific features of the questions proposed for the survey, it is necessary to note that samples can be discussed as rather similar in relation to demographics. Thus, there are a lot of similarities regarding the age, gender, religion, and education.
Similarities in political preferences can be influenced by the demographics criteria because the majority of the participants belong to the same social sector and share similar social and political interests. The descriptive statistics can be successfully used to summarize a sample and provide the definite results in the form of numbers without presenting conclusions.
To understand the role of the descriptive statistics in the project, it is necessary to concentrate on the variables discussed and on the results of the survey. The descriptive statistics used in the research is helpful to discuss the willingness of people to participate in protests as the dependent variable with references to the mode as the measure of the central tendency.
Thus, it is possible to focus on the general willingness of citizens to support the protests associated with the general perception of the Arabian Spring. In this case, the medium is more appropriate to discuss the independent variable studied in the project. The average people’s perceptions of the Arabian Spring influenced by their demographic characteristics affect their further decisions in relation to participating in protests.
According to the descriptive statistics results, the participants interested in the project are predominantly male, the average age is 18-28 years, these persons are mainly students studying in colleges who are characterized by a rather low socioeconomic status and share the democratic ideas, and this tendency is observed even with references to the first fifteen respondents answering the survey questions.
Table 1. Demographics Results
Graph 1. Demographics Results (15)
Summarizing the sample, it is important to pay attention to the fact that the identified demographic characteristics influence the participants’ choice of the decision in relation to protesting significantly. Thus, the variability of citizens’ perceptions in relation to the Arabian Spring should be discussed in the context of the sample demographics.
It is appropriate to test the hypothesis about the dependence of citizens’ participation in protests on the perception of the Arabian Spring with references to the Chi-Square test. It is necessary to compare the expected willingness of citizens to participate in protests and observed one as well as the role of discussing the Arabian Spring as successful or unsuccessful.
The Chi-Square test results support the hypothesis that the vision of the Arabian Spring’s successfulness can influence the citizens’ further participation in protests. Using the test statistic (Χ²=∑(O-E)²/E), it is possible to calculate the researched dependence and focus on the difference between the observed and expected willingness of people to support protests. The low measures in relation to the differences allow speaking about the relevance of the discussed hypothesis.
Nevertheless, the used Chi-Square test has both the strengths and weaknesses. Being an effective hypothesis test based on the statistical data, the Chi-Square test usually refers to the normal distribution. Thus, the Chi-Square test is helpful to observe the studied dependence and examine the possible difference which can exist between various groups of participants presented in the sample.
However, the Chi-Square test is more oriented to the practical and numerical results without providing the theoretical information. Moreover, to guarantee the accurate results, it is necessary to concentrate on the possible observed and expected frequencies which are stated in the studied table. In spite of the possible weaknesses and errors while calculating the results according to the Chi-Square test, this measure of association is effective to analyze the findings in order to conclude about the effectiveness and appropriateness of the proposed hypothesis.
The Chi-Square test is useful for measuring the dependence between the people’s willingness to participate in protests and their perception of the Arabian Spring’s successfulness as well as for connecting the demographic statistics with the observed findings. The research question of the project is developed to examine the dependence between citizens’ perceptions of the successfulness of definite political events such as the Arabian Spring and people’s willingness to participate in further protests with references to their perceptions and visions of the results.
It is possible to state that the dependence and correlation was found with the help of the project preformed, and the main hypothesis about the existing dependence and connection was supported. However, political events are complex in their nature, and a lot of aspects can influence the citizens’ political and social behaviour. Thus, the focus only on the visions of successfulness of the political situation and its results for the public can be discussed as limiting the examination of the other aspects of the problem.
To avoid limitations and present the complex picture of the issue from the larger perspective, it is important to refer to the demographics results and citizens’ political preferences as also influencing the further participation in protests. The development of the project allowed to observe the connection between the citizens’ perceptions of the political events and situations and their further actions associated with the social or political life.
Thus, it was found that the vision of certain political events as successful can stimulate citizens’ further participation in the similar events because of orienting to the success. The failure in the development of the political situation can lead to citizens’ lack of interest in relation to the definite way of resolving this or that problem. From this point, those persons who discuss the Arabian Spring as successful are inclined to support the method of protests to resolve the further political issues because of concentrating on the positive results.
However, the question still needs to explain the fact that the results of the Arabian Spring can be considered as both negative and positive ones by different people with references to their socioeconomic status.