American's International Knowledge

American's International Knowledge

In the last century international affairs has become increasingly important and critical to U.S. politics. The importance of education with respect to foreign affairs is rising, and is becoming more and more imperative that everyone become familiar with its effects on everyday life. In our project we wanted to research how the level of knowledge about international affairs influences the subject's involvement in government.

We believe that a large portion of Americans are disengaged from global participation and effectively fail to modernize their opinion, which further secludes the idea of global continuity. We chose to research this because as globalization and economic interdependence continually make our world smaller. Knowledge of international affairs is vital for a citizen to be an effective member of society by making important voting decisions.

Our group wants to research the extent of American's knowledge about foreign issues that concern the global community. We also want to study how the level of knowledge compares to the level of participation a subject has in various political activities. We hope to encompass all of these matters in our research question, How does the level of knowledge about international affairs affect the subject's involvement in foreign relations?

Our theoretical answer is that the level of knowledge directly affects a subject's involvement in foreign relations. The higher the level of knowledge a subjects has, the more concerned the subject is with improving what he or she disagrees with in foreign policy. This is because exposure to international news increases a subject's capacity for viewing the world with a critical perspective, empowering them to interpret foreign policy from a variety of political, economical, and cultural view points.

Our hypotheses are as follows:

The more sources a subject uses, the more knowledgeable they are about the status of international affairs

The higher level of education a person has, the more likely they are to participate in their respective political process.

The more knowledge a person has about international affairs, the more likely they are to think foreign policy affects them personally.

In our research, we are testing the knowledge of American citizens. To have our result data have fewest errors possible, we are selecting the subjects randomly. No grouping of age or level of basic education will be done during this experiment. Variables we need during testing will be basic questions about foreign affairs, then leading to more detailed questions followed by asking what roll they take and how they participate.

Literature Review

Researcher and author Stephen Earl Bennet articulates that the number of sources a subject uses is spurious to the causality of someone's knowledge of international affairs. This directly has an effect on our first hypothesis. Bennet emphasizes that availability to information is not all that it takes to gain knowledge about international or domestic affairs. Research from the 1940's done by two men, Hyman and Sheatsley, states that much of American's international knowledge is constricted by the amount of available news sources, but as technology would advance, so would people's aptitude for international affairs. Additionally, most researchers held a high correlation between domestic and international knowledge.

Bennet's research, published in 1996, agreed to some extent with Hyman and Steatsley. While advances in technology contributed greatly to the nation's capacity for global affairs, a large portion of citizens are still unknowledgeable of both domestic and international affairs. Bennet hypothesized that "cognitive ability", or intellect, was the most restricting aspect of people's knowledge. Bennet concluded that the amount of information available does have an impact, but intellectual capacity is the real determining factor for one's comprehension of world events.

Another researcher named Reginald Smart brings up significant ideas about what he calls an "international education", which can be either beneficial or detrimental to a nation or group of nations. His article talks about how a populous' general knowledge of international relations is divided into several areas of interest. These aspects directly affect a nation's military, economics, government and acceptance of surrounding cultures and therefore define a country's activism in its geographic proximity

Smart says that after obtaining a broad sense of society and culture through education, each member of society functions in accordance with what must be done in order for a nation to improve development. More than anything else, Smart emphasizes that citizens must take part in a sense of national identity and political participation in order for that nation to gain any prominence amongst other nations. This study supports our second hypothesis.

In addition, Smart provides evidence that any type of education is beneficial to a nation's international development. Studies in developing countries showed that even as a group of citizens were learning a new language, their capacity and desire for a broad sense of international relations rose correspondingly. Smart declares that although a nation functions as an elite institution, individualistic education is necessary, as often times, a government is reflective of its constituents.

This article strongly supports the idea that a citizen's education is directly related to their level of involvement they have in their country's politics. This relates directly to our third hypothesis. Smart's explanation is that after a person acquires an education, participation and concern for government comes as a "second nature". Though, the vital point for a country's future is the point when a nation gains the availability to obtain an education. This can be used for good or for bad. As in India and Pakistan, each country gives a different edification of the inheritance of Kashmir, which has consequently divided a people of mostly otherwise compatible societies.

Data and Methods

In order to operationalize our research design, we chose to use a simple random sample to select 1,111 subjects to participate in our survey. This specific number was chosen because the number of subjects would be statistically representative of the entire American population and achieve a 95% level of accuracy.