Marketing Research Project: Young Adult’s Political Interest in Australia
  
Executive summary
 
This article concerns about the young adult’s apathy in politics in Australia. This research employed both the qualitative and quantitative method in study of young people between the aged in 18-30 years old, and review into different political spectrum and scopes. This research can help to reflect the current social life in Australia that highlight the case in the aspect of private and public roles of friends and family, and also the interconnection and relationship of this group who are young, energetic and ambitious in different industries and sectors in Australia.
 
Cover Letter
To whom it may concern,
    Young adult is the mainstream of the society in the society in Australia, and the political activity has been absorbing more and more energy from the young adult generation in the last few years. But what actually root deep in the heart of those young adult aged between 18-30, what is their conceptualization and understanding of the group. This research and study would take this as the focus for in-depth research and analysis, with the samples to be studied and the result to be demonstrated in the following sections.
 
1. Introduction
The marketing research of this marketing project is on the young adult. In order to attract the new generation---the 18-30 group to participate in the political-relative activities, there are great market potential for market the politics that attract that group of people. This is a good chance to be advertising and promote the political theme for the target audience. Before this, the market research and study into the target group is necessary. This research highlight the case in the aspect of private and public roles of friends and family, and also the interconnection and relationship of this group, so it benefit the marketing sections that may follow.
 
2. Background
There is sufficient academic research in the aspect of young people’s choice in the engagement in the politics. The electoral politics differ from country to country, and countries are diversified in the involvement of their citizens, especially in the young generation’s engagement in the political activity (Mellor,et.al, 2002). In some electoral political country, there are indicators such as voter-turn-out rate that shows the involvement rate in their political system (Harris, et. 2010).
 
Previously there are research on the young people and the politics with the qualitative method (Park,et.al,2004). The interviews can allow more people to involve and take part into the space in exploring their understanding and interest in politics in Australia, which can promote their intention in engagement in politics, and this can be found in the aspects of conventional, party and the electoral politics.
 
The previous research in Australia tells the situation of the young people in lacking the trust in politics, and also the political process. There is a trend of decrease in the political interest, party identification, and trust among the young group. Pirie and Worcester (2000) commented that young generation are not interested in the issue of politics and regard that political activity is not worthwhile for them to devote time and energy into it. They also pointed that the young adult get little knowledge on the various levels of government and with little loyalty on the party they support to or join in. Some of them are not favor in the community activism, not to say participation on those activities. They regard citizenship as a way of business behavior (McAllister, 1998).
 
3. Research problems, research questions & research objectives.
 
The research problems lie in the young audit’s interest in politics, including the involvement and participation of the community activism in parties and other political relative activities; and the citizenship among people in the topic of political in Australia and nearby communities.
 
The research questions cover the following: why they are passionate or indifferent on the political issue in Australia; what may be the reasons to trigger or discourage the young adult to show their interest and intention of involvement of the activities; what can be done to improve the current situation; what would be change from the contemporary situation in this aspect in Australia.
 
The research objectives includes: (1) the current situation of the young adult’s attitude toward politics; (2) the reasons on the attitude of the young adult’s toward politics in Australia; (3) what are the factors that lead to the negative impact on young adult’s involvement and participation on the political issues; (4) what would be the possible trend in this issue; (5) Any tools or methods to encourage more young adult to participate more on the relative activities.
 
4. A clear definition of the target market(s) in operational terms
 
The target market is the young adult, so it should be in the age between 18 to 30 years old. They belong to the generation that is the mainstream of the political participants in the growing trend. In this group, the individuals are independent, willing to be innovative and accept the new ideas, being individualistic in taking opinions and sharing points of views. They are also the future decision makers in the major fields, organizations and parties. Also they are easily impacted by the new concepts and ideas.
 
5. The research methodology
The study aims at understanding the young adult’s conceptualization and interests in politics in Australia, in the event of the study to be based on the survey research.  The research method takes both qualitative and quantitative of the comparative research to demonstrate and explain the political participation among young adult in the change of the political environment in Australia.
 
The qualitative design in the research covers the combination of 5 focus group, 10 in pairs, and 20 individual interviews. This was the structured interview across the group in aged 18-20, 21-25, 26-30 years old. This qualitative study was selected in the rationale manner as the sample for the statistical representative sample for the sake of ensuring diversity of coverage of some significant variables in the analysis. There is a set of variables for the guarantee of the diversification in coverage in the factor including age, gender, ethnic origin, social class, educational background, employment information, interest in political issue, and the voting behavior.
 
The whole sampling was selected in the location across Australia in the major city including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart.
 
The whole procedure of the interview of the focus group and the individuals is recorded for the production of transcripts. The analysis was taken in the framework, with qualitative analytic method to be developed in the whole process. Further, the sample selection and the profile of the samples can be crucial for the result of the study, and it aims at meeting different variables and criteria among the young audit group in different scenario and also with different background mentioned above, with the virtually equality in different groups. For constructing the profile of sampling, purposive and snowball sampling techniques were employed for the selection. The young adult’s interests in political work should cover the issues of party politics, the volunteer work, social and political participation, and also the participation in the activism group and so on. In order to reduce the side affect of snowball sampling, different employment methods are adopted to score the organizations through intermediaries, for providing more insights for the young people across Australia. Among the sampling, the representative from some of the major Parties such as Australian Labor Party, Literal Party of Australia, National Party Greens and National Party of Australia fell into the pool of the samples, for they can offer more insights on the Party issues related to this topic.
 
From a quantitative point of view, it is not easy to tell the period effect in defining or reflecting of the events and issues. But it can draw some episodic variations of the cases and data in different group with the variance under the interpreting quantitative indication and analysis, under the quantitative objectives.
 
6. Conclusion
 
This research takes the young adult aged 18-30 in Australia as the main group to look into with the qualitative and quantitative methods in the research and study process. The topic of interest in politics can be very objective opinion, but this study tries to gain some main factors, some major reasons and opinion, and some trends in line with the data and information collected, under the sampling and the process of data.
 
Reference
Harris, A., Wyn, J., Younes, S., 2010. ‘Beyond apathetic or activist youth: ‘Ordinary’ young peope and contemporary forms of participation,Young18(1):9-33
 
McAllister, I., 1998. ‘Civic Education and Political Knowledge in Australia’,Australian Journal of Political Science, 33(1):7–23.
 
Mellor, S., Kennedy, K., Greenwood, L., 2002. Citizenship and Democracy:Australian Students’ Knowledge and Beliefs. The IEA Civic Educational Study of Fourteen,Year Olds. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research
 
Pirie, M., Worcester, R. M., 2000. The Big Turn-off: Attitudes of Young People toGovernment, Citizenship and Community, London: Adam Smith Institute
 
Park, A.. Phillips, M. , Johnson, M. ,2004. Young People in Britain: The Attitudes and Experiences of 12 to 19 year olds. Nottingham: Department for Education and Skills.