I have been asked to carry out research on the political values and opinions of long-term western expatriate residents in Taiwan by my Phd research advisor for a paper presentation at a conference on migration in Taiwan in December.
I am looking for western expatriate residents who have resided in Taiwan for over 7 years to complete a survey of 30 questions I have created on political values and opinions.
I’m hoping to get as many responses as possible to make the results more representative, valid and meaningful. Here’s the link if you wish to participate.
Pretty good survey. My only criticism is that most questions restricted one from choosing more than one answer, and I sometimes wanted to give more than one. In the question “Is Taiwan an independent country?” for example, I wanted to tick both “It is an independent country” and “it is unresolved.” It is effectively and legally an independent country, but China says they want it, and from time to time threaten Taiwan about it. Some Taiwanese want to unite with China, some are passionately against it, but the majority don’t seem to give a rats arse about it as long as they can make money and they’re all right, Jack. Thus the issue is unresolved.
There were some other questions where I wanted to choose more than one answer.
I thought the Government hadn’t released the contents, which was what the DPP are complaining about. How do you rate your understanding on the content of an agreement that has yet to be made public?
Mick, you make a very salient point there (as does Ice-raven). I guess my reasoning for putting that question in is that in my perception of events, the Government has been promoting the pact on the basis that the public should make a decision now to agree or disagree with ECFA based on the limited information about its content currently available. I agree that there is in fact very little information yet available. In a way, it was put in to raise attention to the paradox of the situation and to provide context for the following two questions. My biggest concern though is to find a way to verify the results that I do have because it is after all an anonymous online survey - something that is inherently vulnerable to tampering. Accordingly, I will probably carry out person to person interviews of a sample of respondents to match against the online results. If you’d like to be interviewed please let me know in this forum topic below. We could probably do it by skype to avoid excessive transport costs. I have about 100 completed forms so far (in only 48 hours! an amazing response) so I may need about 20-30 volunteers for interview. Send an email to bengoren@mac.com if you want to take part.
A lot of the questions seemed superfluous or at least very leading – I answered “strongly agree” to all except the death penalty one, for example, because any other answer would be patently ridiculous. I felt I was being manipulated by the question choices and almost ditched the survey. However, I submitted it anyway.
And ditto to the several ECFA questions. They are totally irrelevant. Nobody knows the answers because the contents of the ECFA have not been revealed. At the very least, you should include the question of which newspaper you read every day.
Sandman, please see my response to Mick above as to why I included the ECFA questions. As for asking about reading habits, since most media in Taiwan is politically biased perhaps you could tell me what utility that would have had for my research. Would it have been useful to find out that, with all probability, most DPP supporting respondents read the Taipei Times or that most KMT supporters read the China Post? What I do regret is not including a question about the language ability of the respondents, not giving a multiple choice option for the identity of Taiwan (the criteria for this question could have been worded better - it assumed Republic of China meant ROC not PRC) and not wording the 10 issues better to avoid the feeling of manipulation you felt. No survey is perfect and I’m sure others will post below with their own critiques and comments all of which I will happily read and take into consideration. One other issue constrained me which was a question limit. At 30 questions I felt any more would have been excessive and annoying. So … that’s why I am organising interviews with a sample to cross-reference the survey results and to get more a nuanced picture. I shall likely be asking about media habits / preferences and language ability then as well as any other areas Forumosa members can point out as important topics to cover.
Thanks for completing the survey and posting your thoughts here,
Ben.
Precisely. So with that information, at least you’d get more idea of the political bias regarding ECFA – ie, “97% of those who disagree with ECFA read the Liberty Times.”
It would provide a bit of backup, seeing as ANY ECFA opinion is going to be totally political – merely a reflection of the green-blue divide – rather then based on the actual content of the thing, which nobody knows.
Anyway, I did it and tried not to lie too much.
