FSHS policy Data

Description

This dataset accompanies the study "Educational Policy and the Ballot Box: Interrogating the Political Influence of the Free Senior High School Policy on University Students' Electoral Choices in Ghana's 2024 General Elections." It contains the tabulated survey results used to examine how perceptions of Ghana's Free Senior High School (FSHS) policy shaped the electoral behavior of university students in Ghana's 2024 general elections. Data were collected via a structured, validated 40-item questionnaire administered to undergraduate students at the University of Ghana, Legon, using a stratified random sampling design across seven academic faculties (Business School, Social Sciences, Applied Sciences, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Health Sciences, and Law). Of 450 questionnaires distributed, 415 valid responses were obtained (98.3% response rate), exceeding the minimum sample size of 384 derived from Cochran's (1977) formula for a finite population of approximately 15,000 students. The instrument measured five domains: (A) respondent demographics, including age, gender, academic level, faculty, FSHS beneficiary status, and 2024 party vote choice; (B) perceptions of the FSHS policy; (C) perceptions of FSHS implementation challenges; (D) policy satisfaction and institutional trust; and (E) voting behavior and electoral choice attribution, split into items addressing direct policy influence (RO1) and challenge-driven voting (RO2). Items B–E used a five-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree). The overall instrument demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.921), with subscale alphas ranging from 0.871 to 0.903. The dataset comprises nine tables reporting: sample size calculation parameters; stratified sampling allocation by faculty; subscale reliability statistics; respondent demographic frequencies; item-level descriptive statistics (percentage response distributions, means, and standard deviations) for each of the four Likert sections; and a Spearman's rank-order correlation matrix among the five key constructs (FSHS perception, implementation challenges, policy satisfaction, voting behavior, and challenge-driven voting). All figures represent aggregate/summary statistics computed in SPSS Version 28 from the original field data collected in 2025; no individual-level or personally identifiable data are included. Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Ghana Ethics Committee for the Humanities, and all participation was voluntary with informed consent.

Steps to reproduce

Contact the authors

Institutions

• University of Ghana

  Greater Accra, Accra
• Utah State University

  Utah, Logan

Categories

Licence