Date of Last Revision

2023-05-02 18:58:35

Major

Political Science

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Date of Expected Graduation

Spring 2016

Abstract

Public opinion polling has been a major source of information regarding opinion data from respondents within a geographical area. Trade liberalization, or reducing barriers to trade, has been a source of controversy throughout history, more recently since the world has globalized. In this paper, four social factors will be analyzed based on responses to public opinion questions to determine if these factors influence people’s opinions on trade liberalization. Chile has been used as a model for successful trade liberalization in Latin America, and is the country analyzed in this paper.

The public opinion data gathered from Latino Barometer surveys will be analyzed using regressions and Pearson’s correlation coefficients. The p-values will be compared at a 0.05 confidence interval and conclusions will be drawn from those results. This research could potentially be generalized to other nations within Latin America, or other countries of similar demographic and social values.

In section 1, introduction and background information is discussed. Section 2 will focus on previous literature regarding this topic, and relevant theories regarding the four social factors analyzed. The hypotheses chosen to be analyzed are outlined in section 3, followed by the research design used in section 4. The empirical data is discussed and analyzed in section 5, and finally, followed by the conclusions drawn from data in section 6.

Research Sponsor

Dr. Karl C. Kaltenthaler

First Reader

Dr. Sucharita Ghosh

Second Reader

Dr. Ronald Gelleny

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