Research Question 2

When looking for an answer to my second research question -- Is there a correlation in a person's educational level and news seeking habits? -- I chose educational level as my control question and four other questions from the survey related to news-seeking habits in individuals to determine if there is in fact a difference between those with higher educational degrees and lower degrees. Participants, who chose “other” for this question, said they graduated from trade school or had earned educational certificates but no degree.
First I analyzed the answers given to the question “Do you actively seek out news? If so why?” The groups were those with a high school diploma/GED, some college, an associate’s degree, a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, a PhD or other. Across the board, the majority of each group said they did actively seek news, but with each higher degree of education, the percentage goes up. The break down is as follows: 53.3% of those with a diploma or GED answered yes, 62.3% with some college, 66.7% of those with an associate’s, 87.9% of those with a bachelor's degree, 97% with a masters degree, 97.1% of those with a PhD and 25% of those who checked “other” said they actively seek news. The majority of those answering yes said they want to be informed citizens and those who do not actively seek news said it was too biased or they claimed time constraints inhibited their news seeking. Some also said that the news was too depressing and/or negative.
The next survey question I looked at to determine if educational level plays a role in news habits was “On average, how much time do you spend consuming news per day?” The answers to this question may be tainted by the fact that a handful of individuals who took the survey work in the newsroom of the local paper. With that being said the response break down is as follows: 53.3% of those with a high school diploma or GED spend less than one hour per day seeking news and 46.7% seek between one and three hours of news per day; 58.6% of those with some college spend less than one hour seeking news, 39.1% spend one to three hours and 1.8% spend between four and six hours seeking news per day; 52.2% of participants with an associate’s degree seek less than an hour, 43.5% seek between one and three hours and 2.3% seek ten or more hours of news each day; 30.4% of those with bachelor's degrees seek less than one hour of news, 58.9% seek between one and three hours, 5.4% seek four to six hours, 3.6% seek seven to nine hours and 1.8% seek ten or more hours of news on average per day; 35.3% of participants with master's degrees view less than one hour of news, 55.9% view between one and three hours and 8.8% seek four to six hours of news a day; 32.4% of survey takers with a PhD seek less than an hour of news, 61.8% seek one to three hours and 5.9% seek four to six hours; 100% of participants choosing other view less than one hour of news each day.
My next survey question to analyze for the answer to research question two was “How do you get your news when you do seek it out?” With this question, participants could choose all that applied to them. The choices were TV, radio, newspaper, Internet, magazines and other. Survey takers with a high school diploma or GED overwhelmingly get their news from TV (86.7%); the top three answers for those with some college were TV (77.8%), Internet (76.1%), and newspaper (64.1%); the top three for those with an associate’s were Internet (70.8%), TV (66.6%), and newspaper (58.3%); for those with a bachelor's the top three were newspaper and Internet (81%) and TV (70.7%); participants with a master's get their news from these sources, Internet (97%), newspaper and TV (87.9%), and radio (69.7%); PhD participants' top answers were newspaper (82.4%), Internet and radio (73.5%), and TV (67.6%); those who chose “other” for their educational level get their news from TV and newspaper (100%) and from Internet (75%).
The fourth question I used was “What type of information do you seek when viewing news?” I do believe that the state of our economy, just coming out of a long election process and the current wars, may have inflated the responses to this question a bit. The choices were international, national, state, local, sports, financial and other. National and local news were evenly sought out by those with a diploma or GED (53.3%); participants with some college said local news (68.9%) was their first choice and international news (50.3%) was second; those with an associate’s said local news (70.8%) was their first priority and state (50%) was second; survey takers with a bachelor’s degree chose national news (81%) as their number one concern, local (77.6%) as second, state (62.1%) third and international (55.2%) fourth; participants with a master’s degree also chose national (97%) as their first priority, local (78.8%) as second, international (72.7%) third and state (63.6%) fourth; those with a PhD had national (97.1%) as their first news interest, international (88.2%) as second, state (79.4%) third, local news (70.6%) fourth and financial (61.8%) as fifth; participants who chose other as their educational level said that local news (100%) was first choice, state (75%) was second; and international, national and financial (50%) was last.
This information does show a difference in news-seeking habits between those with lower educational levels and higher educational levels. This research project seems to point to a correlation between those with higher degrees and news-seeking habits so I conclude that the answer to my second research question is yes.