, SEMESTER 01 ASSIGNMENT ACTIVITIES ASSIGNMENT 01
Research Topic: A voter apathy among South African (or
your home country) university students: a mixed-method
study. Introduction and Background As a political
communication research consultant, you have been
approached by an international youth and development
organisation, Youth Vision Society (YVS) based in
Manitoba, Canada, to conduct a pilot study of a mixed-
method research approach to survey voter apathy among
South African (or your home country) university students.
You have been requested to first present a research
proposal (a research plan, which forms part of Assignment
01) and to conduct the research pilot study (which forms
part of Assignment 03). The previous studies by Henn,
Weinstein and Forrest (2005:557) revealed that British
young people generally find “politics uninviting and
irrelevant” to their lives. Another study by Martin (2014)
added revealed that Australian citizens have little
confidence in political parties in Australia. A South African
study (Oyedemi & Mahlatji 2016) notes that there is voter
apathy among the “born-frees” a generation of young
people born since 1994, who did not vote in the 2014
General Elections. McKinley (2014) argues that this is a
generation of young people more concerned about their
future in a society characterized by high levels of poverty,
Research Topic: A voter apathy among South African (or
your home country) university students: a mixed-method
study. Introduction and Background As a political
communication research consultant, you have been
approached by an international youth and development
organisation, Youth Vision Society (YVS) based in
Manitoba, Canada, to conduct a pilot study of a mixed-
method research approach to survey voter apathy among
South African (or your home country) university students.
You have been requested to first present a research
proposal (a research plan, which forms part of Assignment
01) and to conduct the research pilot study (which forms
part of Assignment 03). The previous studies by Henn,
Weinstein and Forrest (2005:557) revealed that British
young people generally find “politics uninviting and
irrelevant” to their lives. Another study by Martin (2014)
added revealed that Australian citizens have little
confidence in political parties in Australia. A South African
study (Oyedemi & Mahlatji 2016) notes that there is voter
apathy among the “born-frees” a generation of young
people born since 1994, who did not vote in the 2014
General Elections. McKinley (2014) argues that this is a
generation of young people more concerned about their
future in a society characterized by high levels of poverty,
