1. The document proposes an experiment to test the hypothesis that hearing President Obama's middle name "Hussein" decreases support for the president among Americans. 2. The experiment would involve showing videos about Obama's background and presidency to a control group that only hears "Hussein" once versus an experimental group that hears it multiple times. Support would be measured before and after using questionnaires. 3. There are threats to the internal and external validity of the experiment, including maturation of subjects, lack of control for prior knowledge and opinions of Saddam Hussein, and artificiality of the laboratory setting preventing generalization. More work is needed to properly operationalize and test the hypothesis.

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Does Hearing President Obama's Middle Name, "Hussein," Affect Americans' Support for the
President?
Jaclyn A. Javurek
Arizona State University
There has been a lot of discourse around President Barack Obama's middle name, "Hussein."
Before Obama, the main frame of reference the majority of Americans had for the name
"Hussein" was of course Saddam, the former president of Iraq. The brutal dictator Saddam
Hussein was executed in December 2006 for "crimes against humanity including willful killing,
illegal imprisonment, deportation, and torture" (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014).
Less than two years later, President Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the
United States.
I have noticed that conservative political talking heads in the media seem to emphasize the name
"Hussein" when taking issue with President Obama. Perhaps this is to evoke some sort of pre-
conditioned negative association their listeners or viewers have with the word "Hussein." After
all, Saddam Hussein was Public Enemy #1 in America for decades. I am 31 years old and until
the attention shift to Osama bin Laden,1 my entire childhood vision of the "bad guys" was
Saddam Hussein.
I hypothesize that the more people hear President Obama's middle name, Hussein, the less they
support President Obama. For this experiment, the units of analysis are individual people. The
independent variable is the word "Hussein" and the dependent variable is the people's support of
1 For simplicity of research,I am going to choose to ignore the Obama/Osama rhyme here, though in this context I
do admit itis a peculiar coincidence.

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the President. Because I think that as the independent variable (hearing the word "Hussein")
increases, the dependent variable (support for the President) will decrease, I think the two
variables have a negative relationship.
I would test my hypothesis with a classic pre-test/post-test in a laboratory setting. I would try to
make it as close to a randomized controlled design as possible. I would first find a random
sampling of 300 Americans. I would split them into two groups of 150- a control group and an
experimental group. I would first show them identical hour-long videos that summarize President
Obama's background and accomplishments as president. This video would be as politically
neutral as possible and simply provide information with as little bias as possible. In this video,
the narrator would use the middle name "Hussein" in the introduction, but never after that. After
the individuals watch the video, I would have them each fill out the same 30-question Linkert-
scale questionnaire, which I will call Q1, about their general opinions of President Obama's
policies and priorities. Some questions will be just about general support of the President, while
others will focus on the individual's opinions of Obama's policies and procedures outlined in the
video. I would then compile data and compare the results between the control and experimental
groups, making sure the groups were similar in their overall responses.
Next, I would show the 150-person control group another hour-long video with general
information about the President. This video's tone and perspective should also be neutral and
should be as similar as possible to the first video, just covering different facets of Obama's
presidency and history. This video would also use "Hussein" only once, again in the
introduction. I would present a similar questionnaire to the first one, this one called Q2. The
questions about general support of the President will be the same, but the questions about

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policies and procedures will cover the aspects of Obama's presidency that are relevant to this
second video. This second questionnaire will also be a 30-question Linkert-scale questionnaire.
I would also show the 150-person experimental group another hour-long video with general
information about the President. This will be the exact same video that the control group just
saw, only instead of saying "Hussein" only in the introduction, the narrator will also use
"Hussein" three more times throughout the hour, with as minimal emphasis on the word as
possible. The goal is for the experimental group to hear the name but in a way that is natural, not
emphatic. This group would also receive Q2. Then I would again compiled data and compare the
experimental and control groups' responses to Q2.
If I am correct in my hypothesis that more exposure to Barack Obama's middle name "Hussein"
causes individuals' support for him to decrease, then the experimental group's responses to Q2
will reflect less support for the President than their responses to Q1. This also means that after
the experimental manipulation, or implementation of the independent variable, the experimental
group will have less support for Obama than the control group. The control group's responses to
Q2, however, should be very similar to their responses to Q1. Thus, the control group should
remain unchanged in their opinions while the experimental group should show a discernable
decrease in support for President Obama.
One potential threat to internal validity in this experiment is maturation. It might be hard to find
300 individuals who maintain the same level of attention span through two hour-long videos
about the same topic. Both the control group and experimental group could get distracted, tired,
or bored and not pay as much attention to the second video. If this happens, then a decent amount
of people in the experimental group may not even pay enough attention to hear the word

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"Hussein," and thus, the experimental treatment would become irrelevant. This is tricky because
I do not want to draw too much attention to the word "Hussein," yet I obviously want the
individuals in the control group to hear it.
A second potential threat to internal validity in this experiment is history. I have not accounted
for preconceived opinions about Saddam Hussein when establishing my control and
experimental groups. There could be a large discrepancy between groups in how much the
individuals already know about Saddam Hussein. For instance, maybe there are more young
adults in the experimental group. Then there is a chance the younger people were too young to
remember Desert Storm, and thus "Hussein" probably would not have as strong of a negative
connotation to them. To make sure the control groups and experimental groups have a similar
background in familiarity, I could give out pretests asking all the individuals about their general
knowledge about Saddam. Unfortunately, this would create demand characteristics and cause
test-subject interaction, which would be another threat to the internal validity of this experiment.
I do not want to alert the participants to the fact that I am documenting their reactions to a
specific word, and that would obviously be impossible if I distribute a questionnaire about that
very word.
A final potential threat to the internal validity of this experiment is the artificial environment.
When most people watch, for instance, a special on the History Channel about a president, they
usually are on their couches and probably are not dedicating 100% of their attention to the
television. My experiment eliminates outside factors by putting them in a controlled
environment, but this also encourages them to pay closer attention to the narrator's words than
they would in their own homes.

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I think the biggest threat to external validity in this experiment is there is no ability to generalize.
Since generalization is basically the definition of external validity (Johnson, 2012, p. 178), this
experiment has very low, if not nonexistent, external validity. Even if I were to adjust the
experiment to have perfect internal validity, I would not be able to say it has external validity. It
is impossible for 300 people to perfectly represent the entire American population. Furthermore,
this experiment also lacks external validity because I have not yet established reliability. I would
have to conduct this experiment a number of times with a variety individuals as of units of
analysis before I could find any reliability in this classical experiment. Once I established
reliability, I could move on to find both internal and external validity. Finally, if I were to move
forward with this experiment, I would also have to do a more thorough job of conceptualizing
the term "support." If I do not define that which I am manipulating, I definitely will not be able
to analyze my data in any meaningful way.
While I am definitely interested in knowing how the President's middle name "Hussein"
resonates with the American public and affects support for President Obama, I realize that I
would have consider countless other factors before I would be able to properly test my
hypothesis and find any internal, let alone external, reliability.
Johnson,J.B. (2012). Political Science Research Methods. ThousandOaks:CQPress.
The Editors of EncyclopediaBritannica.(2014,October28). SaddamHussein.RetrievedFebruary2,
2015, fromEncyclopediaBritannica:http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/277539/Saddam-
Hussein