The 2016 Election
The Research Question
My question regarding the 2016 election is this: why did Americans vote for Donald Trump? This is a decidedly open-ended question, which means it would involve exploratory research rather than the testing of a hypothesis. The research could consist of a mixed-methods design with both qualitative and quantitative research conducted. Individuals could be asked both open-ended questions and closed-questions (with Likert-scale measures in place).
How I Would Answer This Question
A good means of collecting data for exploratory research is the interview method or the survey method (Leonard, Noelle et al.). First, I would break up the voting sample into demographics: (a) gender, (b) age, (c) voting history (Party affiliation), (d) region of the country, (e) religion, (f) ethnicity/race, and (g) ideology (ex., conservative, liberal, libertarian, reform, etc.). Then I would seek to obtain a sample of participants that could provide me with a significant set of data that I could draw reasonable conclusions as to why different voters voted for Trump. I would like to post a survey online using social media—Facebook and Twitter—and also obtain individuals for interviews using social media as well....
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