PARTICIPATION DETERMINANTS IN AHBÄ€SH SECT ACTIVITIES IN THE HARARI COMMUNITY, MELBOURNE

Abstract

This study explores the determinants of participation in AhbÄsh Sect activities by the Harari Community of Melbourne with the objectives of describing the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents, highlighting the various activities/programs of the AhbÄsh Sect, examining the factors determining willingness to participate as well as the frequency of participation in the AhbÄsh Sect activities/programs in the study area. As the Harari community in Melbourne are in roughly four groups, stratified random sampling was used. A representative sample size of 65, 80, 80 and 170 was taken from the Krejcie and Morgan's sample size determination table for the population size of each group. Thus, a total of 395 individuals were randomly chosen from the community but only 287 of the returned questionnaires were useful for the analysis: resulting in a 72.7% response rate approximately. Descriptive and double hurdle inferential statistics were used as the analytical tools. The results show that: Most (27.53%) of the respondents are in the 51-60 age group and 60.28% of them are a member of one of the three Harari community organizations. About 65.85% are married and 30.31% are single, 3.38% divorced and only 0.35% are widowed. The results of the double hurdle analysis indicated that the age of the respondents, household size and years of occupation significantly determined the willingness of the respondents to participate in sect activities while gender, age, education level, understanding of Arabic and Harari languages influenced the likelihood of intense participation in sect members various activities with different levels of significance. The study recommends that the Harari community of Melbourne should equip themselves with good religious education from trustworthy sources to guide them against the deviance of this sect.