8. Research design

This research concerned generally to investigate the prospects of “e - government” implementation in Russia from the standpoint of the population willingness. In other words, the research is aimed at investigation the willingness of citizens to realize their political and civil rights and responsibilities using the Internet technologies, provided by the government.

In order to achieve the goal of the study, four research questions were asked. Each question related to the certain process of implementation of effective political communication in the Internet, which was mentioned above. All four questions were asked on the streets in order to reach particular targeting audience of people, who have a sufficient level of computer technology using.

Q1: From where do you prefer to receive political information?

Q2: From where do you prefer to receive information about the candidates during the elections?

Q3: How would you like to solve your daily problems with the authorities (payment for utility bills, filing claims, complaints, obtaining various documents etc.)?

Q4: In your opinion, could the Internet improve the work of the government?

First question related to the process of making completely new medium – the Internet.

Second question related to the process of implementation of political campaigns on the Internet.

Third question related to the process of creating an Internet-based "electronic government”.

Fourth question relates to the general mood of “e-government” implementation among the population and was asked to eliminate the possibility of unreasonable answers on first tree questions only due to the negative attitude towards the idea of the Internet communication.

All three questions are closed ended questions with multiple choices. For each of the questions there are several variants:

Q1: 1 Television; 2 Newspapers; 3 Internet; 4 I’m not interesting in politics; 5 Other variant.

Q2: 1 Television; 2 Newspapers; 3 Internet; 4 I’m not interesting in politics; 5 Other variant.

Q3: 1 On the Internet; 2 In face to face communication; 3 Other variant.

Q4: 1 Could improve; 2 Could degrade; 3 Will make no effect.

Participants had a possibility to choose only one answer from each question. As well, there was no possibility to answer own variant in “other variant” option, because selecting this option itself is a point against the hypothesis of this work. To reduce the probability of having wrong respondents in the study, before the survey respondents were offered to answer three additional questions - whether they are students, what their citizenship (residence permit) and what is their age? If the answers on these questions didn’t satisfy the requirements of the study, people couldn’t inter the questionnaire.

9. Sampling method

To examine the support among the population to such process as widespread of the Internet as a new medium, conducting of election and political campaigns on the Internet and creating an Internet-based "electronic government” in Russia, this study implemented closed ended questions with multiple choices as a form of questionnaire. Total number of participants was 1340 people. All participants at the time of questionnaire were citizens of Russian Federation or live in Russia for minimum five years (residence permit), they were from nineteen to thirty five years old and they were students (bachelor's, master's or Ph.D. degree) or graduates. As well, this study aimed at students, as a basis for future middle class of Russian society. All the results were processed using the SPSS 15.0 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 15.0) software package.