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Hello again Ireland!

First of all I would like to thank each and every citizen who participated in the Roles and Responsibility survey last week. We had an absolutely amazing turnout this time with 68 citizens from 7 different parties participating (compared to the roughly 40 people who participated in each of the last two surveys). Judging by the number of people who participated in the most recent congressional elections, that is almost an entire third of the active population of Ireland! This spectacular success would not have been possible without the overwhelming multipartisan support from all of YOU who helped get the word out. As far as I am concerned you all deserve a great big pat on the back!



For those of you who may not be aware, this particular survey is the latest installment in a series of surveys that is designed to make Saoirse more responsive to the voting public. In the first survey we asked which personal traits you felt were the most important to consider when assigning priorities to congressional candidates. In the second survey we examined specific policy views on a number of foreign and domestic issues. The current survey focuses on the roles responsibilities of the different branches of government in Ireland, as well as private organizations such as military units and political parties. The results of this survey of the survey are summarized and discussed below.





RAFFLE RESULTS:

First things first. Congratulations to the six winners of the Gold drawing! That’s right - SIX! Because of record turnout in this survey, we decided to double the gold prizes that we gave out from three to six. Instead of one person getting 3 gold and two people getting 1 gold, two people won 3 gold and four people won 1 gold! Congratulations Ireland, you earned it!

Winners were determined by assigning each survey-taker a number between 1 and 68 based on the order they took the survey, and then generating random numbers in the same range via the random number generator at http://www.random.org/. Survey-takers that did not hold Irish citizenship or who were members of the Saoirse leadership council were not eligible for the prizes.





3 Gol😛 joey millz (EA)
3 Gol😛 mif86 (Saoirse)
1 Gol😛 Nogin the Nog (IFP)
1 Gol😛 shamazingx (IUP)
1 Gol😛 Ante the Animal (Saoirse)
1 Gol😛 James Keiller (IV)





OVERVIEW

Now onto the nuts-and-bolts of the report. This survey asked a number of questions about the roles and responsibilities of the two main branches of government (congress and CP), as well as political parties, MUs and even individual citizens. We will start by examining the broad relationships between these different organizations, and then bring the level of focus down to each organization and its specific roles and responsibilities. A full graphical summary of the data can be found here. PM me if you are interested in getting access to the full dataset, although due to privacy concerns I can only give you an edited version with identifying information and certain confidential questions deleted.





BROAD RELATIONSHIPS

Two specific question sets probed the overall nature of the relationships between different government and social organizations. The first set of questions asked how strongly a person agrees or disagrees that each branch/organization currently “plays an important role in Ireland”. The graphic below shows the average responses for each branch/organization. To make things more interesting, I have also broken them down by experience, pitting the opinions of the least-experienced players (less than one year) against the opinions of the most-experienced players (more than 3 years). Unsurprisingly, most players clearly believe that the CP and his or her ministers have the most important role to play in Ireland. MUs also have a relatively important role, although not as important as the CP. Both congress and political parties are seen as having the relatively least important role to play in Ireland. Interestingly, this pattern seems to be driven in large part by the more-experienced players, with less-experienced players showing overall less variability in their answers. However, it must be kept in mind that these numbers are relative to each other and no organization or branch was actually seen as being unimportant overall – just more or less important compared to the other organizations.

Average agreement with the statement “[specific organization] plays an important role in Ireland.”

Note: 2=“strongly agree”; 1=“somewhat agree”; 0=“neutral or unsure”; -1=“somewhat disagree”; -2= “strongly disagree”


In another set of questions, participants were asked for their opinions about how they believe the relationships between government branches should change. In these questions, participants were asked whether each of the two main branches of government – the CP and Congress – ought to have more or less power than they currently do, or if their power should stay the same. As we can see from the graphic below, most people believe that congress should have more power than it currently does, whereas they believe that the power of the CP should be decreased slightly or, in the case of the most experienced players, kept exactly the same.

Desired changes in power:

Note: -1😛ower should decrease; 1😛ower should increase; 0😛ower should stay the same





CONGRESS

Next, I analyzed which specific areas that respondents thought congress should get more involved in. As we can see from the graphic below, people generally agreed that the congress should get more involved in every one of the domains proposed, including foreign affairs, vetting government ministers and oversight over country finances (with the average agreement among all domains statistically greater than zero (neutral)). The domain that people felt the most strongly that congress should get more involved in, however, was community affairs. It is also interesting to note that this relationship was even more exaggerated among the most experienced players. For these players, community affairs was the only domain in which average agreement was statistically distinguishable from zero/neutral. Exactly what kind of community affairs congress should get involved in, however, was not asked in this survey and might therefore be a good topic for discussion in the comment section.

Which areas the congress should get more involved in:

Note: 2=“strongly agree”; 1=“somewhat agree”; 0=“neutral or unsure”; -1=“somewhat disagree”; -2= “strongly disagree”


When it came to large decisions such as joining or leaving an alliance organization, the overwhelming consensus among all experience levels was that power should rest with the people (through a referendum) rather than congress or the CP.

Important decisions such as joining an alliance organization should be made by:



Finally we looked at support for creating more standardized procedures for introducing, debating and voting on laws on someplace like the forum or IRC before laws are proposed in-game (with the exception of routine business like alliance renewals). As is clear from the graphics below, most people overwhelmingly supported this idea, with only 11% expressing disagreement of any kind. However, there was overall less support from the most experienced players than there was from the least experienced players.

Support for standardized voting/debating procedures in congress


Support for standardized voting/debating procedures in congress [by experience]

Note: 2=“strongly agree”; 1=“somewhat agree”; 0=“neutral or unsure”; -1=“somewhat disagree”; -2= “strongly disagree”





COUNTRY PRESIDENT (CP)

We next looked at a few things that were more specific to the roles and responsibilities of the CP. In general, people tended to disagree that the CP should have absolute control over things such as foreign affairs. However, this affect appears to have been pushed primarily by the least experienced players, with the most experienced players neither tending to agree nor disagree. More experienced players also tended to agree that the CP should have absolute control over his ministers and government structure, although this difference is not statistically greater than zero (neutral).

Agreement that the CP should have absolute power over selected domains

Note: 2=“strongly agree”; 1=“somewhat agree”; 0=“neutral or unsure”; -1=“somewhat disagree”; -2= “strongly disagree”

A more interesting finding was that the vast majority of participants (81😵 believed that the CP has a responsibility to the Irish people to publish updates about government affairs at least once a week. Moreover, absenteeism and lack of accomplishment was considered by most respondents (79😵 to be a legitimate reason for impeachment. Unsurprisingly, however, the most agreed-upon reason for impeachment was theft or abuse of state resources (94😵. Other reasons for impeachment that were seen as legitimate were not consulting with congress about important decisions (84😵 and, to a lesser extent, poor military decisions (65😵. Disapproval of minister choices, on the other hand, was only seen as marginally more acceptable as a reason for impeachment than “just for fun” (18% and 16%, respectively).

The president has an obligation to publish updates at least:


% agreement that X is a legitimate reason for impeachment






MILITARY UNITS (MUs)

Unsurprisingly, people generally agreed that the most important function of a military unit is fighting and pursuing military objectives (59😵. However, I found it interesting to see that an unignorable 41% thought that socializing and community building was actually more important than actual military objectives. Moreover, as a social organization, it was interesting to see that most people tended to agree that MUs are at least partially responsible for the ethical behavior of their fellow MU members. Thus it appears that in the eyes of most people, the roles of MUs in Ireland go beyond that of just military objectives. There was much less agreement, however, about whether or not it is acceptable for MUs to be actively involved in politics in an organized way.

Most important function of MUs:


Agreement that members of an MU are responsible for the ethical behavior of other members:


Agreemetn that it is acceptable for MUs to be active in politics in an organized way






POLITICAL PARTIES

Political parties were seen as even more of a social club than MUs. Only 31% agreed that the most important function of a political party was pursuing common political interests. This is consistent with previous surveys that found relatively weak attitudes toward specific public policies in general (which would suggest a relatively low demand for an ideological function of parties). An additional 21% believed that the promotion of responsible behavior from its members was the most important function. Most people (49😵 thought that socializing, community building and player retention was the primary benefit/goal of political parties.

Most important function of parties:


Several survey questions also explored how people felt about the power of party presidents. In general, there seemed to be fairly wide acceptance of the legitimacy of coercion (e.g. through endorsement and candidate prioritization) as a way to promote good behavior from party members.

Agreement that it is acceptable for the PP to use coercion to promote behavior that is in-line with national and party interests:


Percent agreement that X is a legitimate reason for the use of party coercion:



Finally, we looked at the morality of “political take-overs” or PTO of parties. For the newer players among you, this is when a group of people join a party (usually a smaller one) in an organized way just before party president elections with the intention of electing one of their own to the position (thus effectively taking over the party without the consent of long-term members). Interestingly, there did not seem to be a clear consensus in this survey as to whether or not such a maneuver is ethical or not. Although 35% felt that PTO is never justified, 40% felt that it could be justified under some circumstances. Moreover, another 25% did not see any problem at all with PTOs, answering that all is fair under game mechanics.

PTO of political parties is:






CITIZENS

In this section we didn’t so much look at responsibilities of individual citizens as motivations and identifications. This section does not require much analysis, so below are simple graphical summaries of all of these questions. The one thing I will say is that I was surprised to see how many people identified primarily with their party or their MU (57% combined) rather than with the nation as a whole (only 32😵.

Activity:


Experience:


What is your age in real life?
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Are you Irish in real life?


Which in-game module is the most fun?


Which area of personal achievement do you respect the most?


Which group do you identify with the most?


How much gold do you typically buy?


What do you typically spend your gold on?






BONUS SECTION

We also included a bonus section that probed several issues that have been of interest in Ireland recently. The first thing we asked was who respondents thought looted the government finances last month (besides sawc). As we can see, the majority of respondents were not sure what to think (41😵. Of those who did have an opinion, 42% thought it was Marcus and 58% thought it was not Marcus. Only 24% of those who had an opinion thought it was Nogin & friends, with the rest thinking it was “some other mastermind” (34😵. I also asked how much each person knows about the evidence. I then used this as the dependent variable in a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to explore the relationship between how much one knows about the evidence and whether or not they thought Marcus was the culprit (excluding those that didn't have any opinion). Interestingly, this analysis showed that there was no statistical relationship between these variables (F=.23; p=0.94). Thus whether or not a person thought Marcus did the crime was not dependent on their expressed knowledge of the evidence.

Who done it?


How well do you know the evidence?

Note: 1=”not at all”; 7=”read every word”

Finally, a question was asked on how strongly participants favored or opposed the recent CanIre Federation proposal that was being explored by our government at the time of this survey. The results (below) show that this proposal had very little support among Irish citizens.

How do you feel about the recent CanIre Federation Proposal?

Note: 1=”hate it”; 7=”love it”





INTERPRETATION ISSUES

It is important to note that most the interpretation found in this article was based on broad overviews and impressions of the data rather than actual statistical hypothesis testing (although there was some limited use of t-tests in certain analyses). Thus any given differences between responses may not necessarily be statistically significant unless specifically stated. Moreover, just as in the last survey there was some party-based selection bias with Saoirse members being somewhat overrepresented compared to other parties. However, this survey was much better than previous surveys in that only 21% of all respondents being Saoirse members (meaning that the large majority of respondents were from a variety of other parties or not affiliated with a party).

Party affiliation


MU affiliation


Other details about respondent makeup, including things such as in-game activity levels, can be found here.





THANK YOU FOR READING!

We hope this information was as helpful to you as it was to us. If you have any issues regarding the interpretation or presentation of the data, please let me know! This analysis was done relatively quickly and, in some parts, with only a superficial glance at the data. Because of this I imagine there are definitely some mistakes or caveats that I have overlooked. If you find any, don’t be shy!

Also, if you missed your chance to win gold, do not worry! We will be coming out with a new survey soon. If anybody has any ideas on the subject of the next survey, please PM me (Stilpo) with your ideas.


Regards,

Stilpo
Public Relations Director for Saoirse
For a Stronger Eire - Together!


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Want to learn more about Saoirse? Join us on IRC at #Saoirse (Rizon), or on our party forum at http://saoirse.forumakers.com/. New players welcome!