9
The questionnaire was designed in both English and Mandarin, the two most
commonly spoken languages in Singapore. The Chinese make up a large percentage
of the electorate and elderly Chinese are still not fluent in English language
Telephone interviews were conducted via the Computer Aided Telephone
Interviewing (CATI) system by a team of 40 university students who were recruited
and trained. The sampling frame is based on computerized databases of residential
numbers obtained from the local telephone operator, Singtel. A list of phone prefixes
was obtained from Singtel and pre-programmed into the CATI system. During the
actual interviewing, the system generates the remaining numbers randomly, thus
ensuring a simple random sample.
A total of 6324 numbers were generated and a final sample size of 691 was obtained,
which, when further examined, is representative of the multi-racial Singapore society.
Data was collected for four days in November under the supervision of faculty
investigators. The student interviewers were instructed to call each number a total of
three times before giving up on the respondent.
SINGAPORE – ITS POLITY AND MEDIA
A.
The Political Scenario:
Singapore became independent in 1965. The country is multi-racial – 76.4 percent
Chinese, 20 percent Malays, seven percent Indian and other races making the
remainder three percent. The Parliament is modeled after the Westminster system.
The first General Election was held in 1959. Elections are generally held every five
years with a few exceptions. The 2001 elections saw a few key changes. The
legislature comprised of 84 seats, one more than the last election. The smaller Group
Representation Constituencies (GRCs) were merged to form bigger GRCs, increasing
the number of members from four to five or six members in each GRC. Overall there
were 14 GRCs and nine single seat wards. The 14 GRCs were made up of nine five
member GRCs and five six-member GRCs. The number of voters had gone up from
1,880,560 in the 1996 election to 2,03,5,422 in 2001.
Convention