Data Analysis Paper

Introduction:

In January 2013, the United State announced the plans for future withdrawal process of
troops in Afghanistan. "What's going to happen this spring is that Afghans will be in the lead
throughout the country", Obama said. "They (ISAF forces) will still be fighting alongside
Afghan troops...We will be in a training, assisting, advising role,." Obama added. He also
stated the reason forof the withdrawals was that "We achieved our central goal, or have come
very close...which is to de-capacitate al-Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they
can't attack us again."

According to Gallup, the job approval ratings of President Obama between that period peaked
at 54%, a record high dating from 2013 to present.

Table 1.1
Intriguingly, however, Obamas approval ratings had fallen to an all-time low of 40% just
before all NATO forces officially ended combat operations in a ceremony held in Kabul on
December 28th, 2014.

Table 1.2

Why is that? Should there not not it be a dramatic increase of public approval for the
president after all the combat troops went home? Are there other factors that possibly gave
rise to this perverse phenomenon? These are questions that will be explained in the following
essay.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx

Hypothesis:

Assume it is the withdrawal process that significantly affected the drop of the presidents job
approval rate from 2013 to the end of 2014. Consequently, public attitude towards a similar
situation of the U.S. president dealing with another hostile and autocratic countrys invasion
to its neighbor that started at the same time of the withdrawal in Afghanistan should also be
affected negatively. To clarify, let us consider an autocratic country that has invaded an
annexed its neighbor, largely due to America standing on the side lines country of autocracy
and hostility that has taken complete control over its neighbor largely due to Americas opting
out. If public opinion or job approval rate of the president on this particular scenario shifts in
the same sense as the pattern from 2013 to the end of 2014, then the withdrawal of troops in
Afghanistan is the main cause of the change in the Presidents job approval rate. Therefore,
my hypothesis is:

It is likely that people will approve the way the president of the United States handles the
aforementioned imaginary situation after the announcement of withdrawal in Afghanistan
(early 2013) than after the complete withdrawal of combat troops there (end of 2014).

Connecting Logic:
Mass media plays a huge role in our everyday life. It not only serves as an effective way of
communication but also provides an important platform for us to acquire information. News
networks such as CNN, FOX, NBC, prove to be indispensable to our political socialization
process--- a lifelong process by which people form their ideas about politics and
acquire political values. Therefore, there was no surprise that headlines as, Obama
announces 34,000 troops to come home (CNN, February 13 th2013) garnered tremendous
public support for President Obama, which in a sense, served as a variation of the rally-
round-the-flag effect. Inevitably, Obamas job approval rate would maintain at a relatively
high level during the massive media coverage of the U.S. withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan
throughout January and February 2013 (according to table 1.1, the job approval rate of the
President Obama ranged from 50% to 54% from Jan.1st to Feb.24th--- a record high since his
glorious old days in 2009).
Likewise, if there was a hypothetical scenario involving an autocratic, hostile country
invading its neighbor just after President Obama announced his future plans for Afghanistan
in early 2013 and the United States opted to not engage itself in that situation, it is most likely
that public opinion would go in the positive direction owing to positive media coverage, even
though omission could lead to serious consequences for other countries in the region and the
stability of world politics as a whole.

Au contraire, with headlines as U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan by end of 2016 (The New
York Times, May 27th, 2014) and 5 harsh truths about the U.S. withdrawal from
Afghanistan (The Washington Post, May 29th, 2014), it is crystal clear that the media stood
against President Obamas policies in Afghanistan. By magnifying the tiniest of details and
partially ignoring the complete withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2014, mass media
guided public opinion in the negative direction. As a result, President Obamas job approval
rates had been on the decline---hovering about low forties (see Table 1.3). And as it is
extremely difficult for presidents to gain public approval without major happenings,
Obama could not recover until early 2015. Similarly, if the aforementioned hypothetical
situation took place just after the complete withdrawal of combat troops deployed in
Afghanistan, public opinion would be appreciably distorted against the president due to
extensive negative media coverage, even though calling home soldiers was in accord with the
wished of American people and unquestionably served as a soothing agent to societal
problems at the time.

True, people may argue the reliability and validity of the theoretical evidence above. After
all, no experiments have been conducted; no data have been collected and evaluated.
Notwithstanding, is this aberration in public support a coincidence? Perhaps not. To make
certain, a further data analysis needs to be conducted to confirm whether the withdrawal
process of troops deployed in Afghanistan (from announcement to complete combat troops
withdrawal) imposed an influence on public opinion between 2013 to the end of 2014 that
cannot be ignored.
 Table 1.3

Data Analysis:

According to data collected from Stanford University in summer 2013, 20 out of 38 students
surveyed approved of how the president handled the hypothetical invasion. Which is to say,
52.6% of the sample size were relatively happy about how the president dealt with the
situation in the imaginary scenario. However, In the same survey that took place at Stanford
in fall 2014, the figure of approval rate shifted slightly, as it went from 52.6% to 49.6%.

Fall 2014 Summer 2016

The most recent survey in the summer of showed that merely 46.3% of students at Stanford
approved of United states stance on the hypothetical invasion. A coincidence to the
hypothesis? After all, the listed data is unsubstantial and only limited to relatively short time
spans. Perhaps a cross-tabulation of the gathered data may help to sort them in order and
therefore render raw data more intelligible.

TIME PERIOD JOB APPROVAL APPROVAL CORRELATION

RATES OF THE RATES OF U.S.
PRES. (%) POLICY IN THE
INVASION (%)

FIRST HALF OF 2013 50.2 52.6

(JAN.--- JUNE)
SECOND HALF OF 42.8 49.6 NOT
2014
APPRECIABLE
(JULY---DECEMBER)

PRESENT 47.9 46.3

(MoE for Job approval rates is 0.0005%) (MoE for approval rates of Policy is 0.153%)

As no correlation between the job approval rates of the president and the approval rates of
policy in the hypothetical invasion is appreciable, it is more than likely that the hypothesis---
It is like that people will approve the way the president of the United States handles the
aforementioned imaginary situation after the announcement of withdrawal in Afghanistan
(early 2013) than after the complete withdrawal of combat troops there (end of 2014)
---proves to be faulty.
Conclusion:
Unsubstantial evidence, high probability of coincidence, failure to take into account other
factors, are some of the errors I have committed in the formulation of the hypothesis.
Perhaps, attempting to find a pattern in rates of approval is beyond most political scientists
(or maybe only highs school students). After all, rates of approval are too psychological, or
intangible to operationalize.

International Relations

Guannan(William)Wu

William,

This was an ambitious paper. Your hypothesis and argument is really creative, even if it was
not supported by the data. I can tell that you were thinking outside of the box!

However, I do think you missed some of the objectives of the assignment. Because you were
trying to make such a difficult (and complicated) argument, your hypothesis isnt very clearly
stated, and I dont think that you were able to as easily identify and justify the assumptions
you were making. Moreover, I think that you misinterpreted the raw data from the different
survey experiments. The percentages you identified as being the percentages of people who
approved of the president were actually just the percentages of people who received the
hypothetical scenario where the president escalated and then back down. Those in the no
column here were the students who received the hypothetical scenario where the president
just chose to stay out from the get go.

Finally, you didnt really discuss the sources of sampling or non-sampling error that could
have affected your results. I saw that you calculated the margin of error, but you did not really
comment on what it meant. Similarly, the prompt asks you how you would rewrite the
questions on the survey to better test your hypothesis, which you didnt really do. The prompt
also asks you to discuss how PS101 students are different from the U.S. population at large
AND explain how those differences would have affected your results here.

This was a challenging assignment, and you tried to formulate and test a really complex
hypothesis. Keep working hard, and let me know if you have any questions. I am more than
happy to help in any way that I can!

Grade: B-