Quantitative And Statistical Research Methods For Racial Discrimination In Australia

Background of the research

Discuss about the Quantitative and Statistical Research Methods.

The topic of the research is racial discrimination followed in organization in Australia. The major victims of racism in Australia are the people of Aboriginal and Torres Islander. They are the natives and the indigenous people of Australia. Apart from them, there are immigrant communities which also faces the discrimination but at a lower rate. It was stated by Gale (2016), that the problems faced by these people in working environment, public places, and other places affect the living standard of the country. It also reduces the efficiency in the working places resulting in a low productivity.

Racial discrimination, commonly known as the racism stands for treating people unfairly on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religious background, colour, and nationality. Racism in Australia is a major issue that affects the daily lives in the workplaces and other places all over the country and shapes the societies. According to Sonn (2012), there are many laws which have been created by the government to reduce such racism issues, yet the problem still exists. Several policies have been taken by the corporate offices and their Human Resource Managements to reduce this problem. These laws and regulations altogether reduced the racism problem to some extent, but there are still scopes for improvement.

Statement of purpose

The purpose of the research is to find out the extent of racial discriminations followed in Australia and the reasons for discrimination. The purpose of this research is to see how much racism affects social activities and the pattern of the discriminations.

The research is aiming to answer the following questions:

• What is the extent of racial discrimination in Australia?
• Who are the main victims of racism in Australia?
• What are the main reasons behind the racist attitude of Australians?

According to Jonason (2015), personality psychology is one of the major reasons behind racial discrimination in Australia. Racism towards Anglo-Australians and Middle-Easterners were the victim along with the Aboriginals. These racism traits were considered as the Dark Triad which incorporates psychopathic, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. They were the victim of social dominance and authoritarianism. The paper showed how racism is often done unintentionally, without the target of hurting someone. But the result is the same. In the opinion of Nelson (2013), there are some factors which determine the racism and to what extent these people face difficulties. It answers the first question of the research. This results in social discrimination and exclusion of certain people from different background. The colour of skin, background, in-group, out-group bias and many other issues are the reasons behind the racial discrimination, which magnifies the discrimination. Racism hits Australia and its citizen to that extent where it disturbs the economic and social processes. As stated by Nott and Hathway (2015), people of Melbourne have to come up and stand against racism in order to make a better society for everyone. According to this paper, getting rid of racism requires effort from two sides, the receiver or victim, and the racist person. Common people marching against the hostile behaviour of several Australians towards the asylum seekers and refugees coming to the country shows the society’s integrity. More examples like this will surely make Australia a tolerant country. Two thousand Australians marched to Federation Square on 4^th April to oppose the bad behaviour towards these people as not reacting to the deeds of racists the minorities are making themselves easily available for these cases. Measures like this are targeted towards reducing the extent of racial discrimination in Australia. As it is not easy to quantify the reasons and extent of racial discrimination, the paper proposes taking qualitative measures to improve the situation. These measures include road march for creating awareness among the citizen.

Research Questions

As stated by Ruhanen and Whitford (2016), many sustainable business models incorporating tourism businesses in Australia are following indigenous policy to improve the socio-economic structure in the country. There are few examples where sustainable indigenous tourism has been achieved. According to many studies, indigenous business persons have to establish themselves as the legitimate business persons to enter into the global market place. The focus of the Legitimacy theory is whether the social and most common norms are followed in the businesses as well regarding racial discrimination. It shows how badly racism affects the indigenous tourism business. The paper also argues that the main victims of the racial discrimination in Australia are the natives and those who have recent immigration history. Due to the diversity in the society, comes a difference in cultures. The victims of the discrimination like the Aboriginals and indigenous are threatened by this trait of the society. It in turn hampers the economic process of the country. It dampens the speed of production in Australia by a huge margin and creates a bad working environment for the people with different background.

In the opinion of Forrest and Dunn (2013), Australia constitutes of a few numbers of ‘non-white’ ethnic minorities. It makes them a soft target for the racial discrimination. They are the main victim of racism in Australia. This is followed by social exclusion in many working places, resulting in decreasing efficiency. A telephone survey of 2007 shows the degree of racism, tolerance, and intolerance rate are different in different places in the same country. The federal government of Australia has taken several measures in order to increase social inclusion. But the measurements were taken without doing any detailed research or survey, which in most cases make the measures a failure and increase what the government is trying to stop in the first place.

According to Forrest, Elias and Paradies (2016), to understand how the mind of a racist works one has first to go through the same. It will help the research by identifying the main reasons behind the racist attitude of Australians. To understand the reasons, according to the paper, it had introduced two new approaches to understanding the racism factors in Australia. Normally, out-group racists target people from other religions, cultures, and societies. Due to the diversity of the population of Melbourne, the survey was done in this Australian city. The paper shows the main reasons behind how people from out-group who are non-whites and belong to backward classes are the easy targets of this kind of racism.

Literature survey

As stated by Noble (2012), the “race debate” in Australia incorporated the One Nation Party led by Pauline Hanson’s criticisms regarding the immigration program of the country. The social transformation from the time of British rule was depicted here. The government of Australia has taken several measures to improve the situation in the country, but the results were not always positive. The type of race discrimination changed from time to time. The pattern of racism changed from “old” to “new racism.” The Australia Asia connection had a positive effect on the issues of racism which later faded with time.

In the view of Li et al. (2013), the degree of racial discrimination hugely depends on prejudicial attitudes of the people. In Australia, among North Queenslander, the classical and modern prejudicial attitudes towards the refugees are mostly witnessed. Classical prejudices are more of an open form. On the other hand, modern prejudice is more subtle in nature. The study was done on 370 residents of North Queenslanders to understand the sentiment behind the discriminations. The case study has shown that the classic racial discrimination has become more socially unacceptable over time, while the modern prejudices are getting accepted. The reason behind this change is people who showed classic racism often are excluded from their usual groups.

As stated by Babacan (2012), racism is a problem faced all over the world from early ages. Most of the racial behaviours have their roots in history. Racial discrimination can be divided into many parts such as, “Racism as domination, Racism as discrimination, Racism as Institution, Racism as racist beliefs, and Racism as discourse.” That racism is called Domination racism where one group of people try and dominate another one. Discriminating racism causes inequality in society. The political environment, different platforms of media, the education system of a country or state incorporates institution racism. Racistly believes formed due to ideological differences. The degree of racism in a country depends on the differences in ideologies.

According to Hage (2014), the new societies of Australia are more inclusive. The groups in the modern era consist of people from different backgrounds and cultures. This has reduced racial discrimination according to some people. In reality, a new kind of racism has taken over modern era. It changed just changed its form, intensity, and the way it circulates in different scenarios. This is true for most of the developed countries. Hence, the government has to implement new rules which will address these new kinds of racism. The old or classic racism has changed over time. This calls for an update in the regulations and corporate policies. The measures have to be more focused towards each one of the racial discriminations. This way more issues can be addressed simultaneously. The root cause behind these issues lies in the epistemological process. 

As stated by Grigg and Manderson (2015), Psychopathy is in the field of anti-social behaviour. Attitudes consisting racial discrimination are considered as anti-social behaviour. These two share commonalities with several traits. The research has proved that there is a strong relationship between Psychopathy and racism. That trait which creates Psychopathy also constructs minds with racist ideologies. The relationship between criminal behaviour and racist attitudes thus are positive. Both male and female carry racist ideologies, and there is no significant difference between the two genders regarding racist attitude. Most of the people are some way or other racists. The reasons are also different behind each case.

This research holds the scope of reducing racial discrimination in Australia. No mental and physical harm were intended to be a part of the research. The names of the participants will not be disclosed without their consent. There is a tremendous scope of benefits for those people of Australia who faces racism in their daily lives. The research will reveal to what extent Australia faces racial discrimination and who are the main victims. The reasons behind racial discrimination will also be revealed which will help both the victims and the government of Australia to take proper policy measures.

This section shows the system of the methods that were used in the research. The researcher will rely on qualitative strategy for its methodology. As the research is explained descriptively the researcher uses qualitative strategy for its evaluation. The interview conducted from the citizens of Australia will be answered descriptively as the questionnaire will contain close ended questions. As quantifying the attributes of discrimination is hard, the research chooses the qualitative measures to understand the racism scenario of the country. The primary and secondary data are thus collected accordingly. The policy measures can be quantified later by the authorities, but at the primary stage the qualitative strategy will help the research to evaluate where the society stands regarding racism.

Statistical operations will be done in order to get results from the collected sample data. The data will be used to understand the extent of racial discrimination that is present in the societies of Australia. Various statistical tools and instruments like econometrics, correlation, and regression will be used in order to get answers to the research questions and targets.

Data will be collected in such a way that the main victims of racism can be identified with ease. Explanations will be provided for the main reasons behind the racist attitude of people in Australia.

To see, the connections between several racial discrimination traits statistical tools like correlation and rank correlation will be used. According to Hedges and Olkin (2014), to understand the factors that affect the racist behaviour of the people, econometrics will be used. This will give an in depth analytical view of the racism scenario in Australia. The victims of racial discrimination will get highlighted according to the research process.

The sample domain will consist of normal Australian citizens with the main focus on the aboriginals and people from Torres Strait Islander. They are the indigenous people of the country.

Stratified sampling will be done for the research where several strata will be created from the collected data. This will ease the process of calculations. The population set is the total number of the citizens of Australia. The samples will be collected randomly from the population to ensure no bias is a part of the research.

Both primary and secondary data will be used for the research purpose. Primary data will be collected directly by creating a questionnaire which will be answered by randomly chosen Australian citizens. Secondary data will be collected from previous private researches and government websites. Primary data will help to understand the unbiased scenario of racism while secondary data will support the literature survey. The results will be interconnected. One will complement the other.

The secondary data will be collected during the time of further literature survey, and primary data will be collected after the research gets approved.

The research is very significant for the people of Australia. The research can also help the organizations operating in Australia to prepare policies which will improve the working environment. The government can also use the research’s results for creating rules and regulations. These will make the country more tolerant. The people of Australia will get a better view of the racism issues.

The limitations of research are those, which could not be controlled. These are the shortcomings which influenced the research and placed restrictions in the research methodology. The major limitation of the study is that it could not incorporate all the time periods in a single time frame to get the results. More time was needed to create a more detailed research process. More time could also provide the opportunity to create a more detailed literature survey. As stated by Martin and Bridgmon (2012), collecting a more detailed primary data would require more time which would make the research more connected to the reality. There might be other situational reasons which determines racism pattern but will not be the part of the research because of lack of statistical attributes.

References:

Babacan, H. (2012). Racism denial in Australia: the power of silence. Australian Mosaic, 32, 1-2.

Forrest, J., & Dunn, K. (2013). Cultural diversity, racialisation and the experience of racism in rural Australia: the South Australian case. Journal of Rural Studies, 30, 1-9.

Forrest, J., Elias, A., & Paradies, Y. (2016). Perspectives on the geography of intolerance: Racist attitudes and experience of racism in Melbourne, Australia. Geoforum, 70, 51-59.

Gale, P. (2016, July). Racism, Nationalism and the Asylum Seeker Crisis: Towards a Sociology without Borders. In Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016). Isaconf.

Grigg, K., & Manderson, L. (2015). Is There a Relationship Between Psychopathic Traits and Racism?. Current Psychology, 34(4), 702-712.

Hage, G. (2014). Continuity and change in Australian racism. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 35(3), 232-237.

Hedges, L. V., & Olkin, I. (2014). Statistical methods for meta-analysis. Academic press.

Jonason, P. K. (2015). How “dark” personality traits and perceptions come together to predict racism in Australia. Personality and Individual Differences, 72, 47-51.

Li, W., Jackson, K., Johnson, H., & Miller, D. J. (2013). Modern and classical racism toward refugees among North Queenslanders.

Martin, W. E., & Bridgmon, K. D. (2012). Quantitative and statistical research methods: From hypothesis to results (Vol. 42). John Wiley & Sons.

Nelson, J. K. (2013). Denial of racism and its implications for local action. Discourse & Society, 24(1), 89-109.

Noble, G. (2012). Transforming A White Australia: Issues Of Racism And Immigration. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(11), 2028-2029.

Nott, J., & Hathway, S. (2015). Racism has no place on our streets. Green Left Weekly, (1048), 9.

Ruhanen, L., & Whitford, M. (2016). Racism as an inhibitor to the organisational legitimacy of Indigenous tourism businesses in Australia. Current Issues in Tourism, 1-15.

Sonn, C. C. (2012). Speaking unspoken memories: Remembering apartheid racism in Australia. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 18(3), 240.