Escaleras, Monica

Social media sites are becoming one of the biggest
sources of information in the world. Particularly, political
and economic news is being communicated widely
on social media in real time with no costs incurred.
The purpose of our research is to examine Hispanics reliance on social media for political information in
the United States. Our results show that the majority
of younger Hispanic voters rely on social media for
their political news. In fact, over 84 percent of those
who are between 18 and 34 years old are more likely
to get their information from social media than any
other source. Furthermore, our findings indicate that
the younger Hispanic population are the most likely
to find the political news on the internet trustworthy. If
political campaigns want to target Hispanics, a rapidly
growing demographic, they should move their attention
towards social media as a major platform for their
political campaigns.

The Cuban Embargo has restricted economic, cultural and diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba for 53 years. On December 17th, 2014, President Obama made a televised-speech on “normalizing relationship with Cuba,” instead of continuing an “outdated approach [that] has failed to advance our interests.” This study will examine and analyze the attitudes of Hispanics living in the United States’ towards the lifting of the Cuban Embargo. We are interested on the Hispanic population because they represent one of the largest and fastest-growing minority groups in the United States. We conducted telephone and online surveys of 500 Hispanics around the country. Our findings indicate that Hispanics have statistically significant different perspectives on lifting the Embargo, expanding trade and reestablishing diplomatic relations depending on their age, gender and other socio-demographic factors.

Does the Mode of data collection affect respondent’s behavior? Specifically, do telephone interviews or online surveys lead to extremity of responses? Many may assume that there is no difference in survey responses conducted online or over the phone. However, evidence supports that respondents give more extreme responses over the telephone than an online survey. We would like to test if what has been found in previous research holds for the Hispanic population, since it is the fastest growing ethnic minority in the United States; therefore they are impacting the culture, the marketplace, and politics within the country. We conducted our analysis by surveying 500 Hispanics nationwide using telephone interviews and online surveys in order to compare the difference in responses between the two modes of data collection. Our analysis supports that there a statistically significant difference in respondents behavior between online surveys and telephone interviews.

Historically, Hispanics have been the ethnic minority, in the United States, with the highest rate of adults without health care insurance. Before the Affordable Care Act passed in 2013, 36 percent of working-age Hispanics were uninsured in the United States. After the bill was passed, the percent of uninsured Hispanics in the population declined to 23 percent in June 2014. This study examines the impact of the Affordable Care Act implementation on the Hispanic population. We conducted a survey of 500 Hispanics nationwide to test the hypothesis on the dissimilarity in health care coverage and affordability among Hispanics males and females. Our results revealed a significant disparity in health care insurance coverage and affordability between Hispanic males and females. The dissimilarity in coverage and affordability between genders has continued after the passing of the Affordable Care Act, a point often overlooked.