Students Benefit from Expanded Presidential Election Cycle

Glen Duerr, Ph.D., assistant professor of international studies at Cedarville University, and his Qualitative Methodology and Reasoning course are getting into the political polling world with recent and upcoming elections that will impact the Miami Valley. The course’s focus has been learning who college students favor among the Republican candidates for president. Of the students who responded to the poll, 49 percent favored Ben Carson and 12 percent liked Marco Rubio. The other top contenders were Ted Cruz (8 percent) and Donald Trump (2 percent). Ohio Governor John Kasich did not measure in the poll, and 15 percent of those polled were undecided. The polling by the students is intended to teach them how to conduct surveys and in-depth interviews and how to package data using qualitative methods. The students were also prepared to conduct polling on a larger scale in anticipation of the 2016 presidential race