{"title":"Survey Attention and Self-Reported Political Behavior","authors":"R. M. Alvarez, Yimeng Li","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfac048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfac048","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Survey research methodology is evolving rapidly, as new technologies provide new opportunities. One of the areas of innovation regards the development of online interview best practices and the advancement of methods that allow researchers to measure the attention that respondents are devoting to the survey task. Reliable measurement of respondent attention can yield important information about the quality of the survey response. In this article, we take advantage of an innovative survey we conducted in 2018, in which we directly connect survey responses to administrative data, allowing us to assess the association between survey attention and response quality. We show that attentive survey respondents are more likely to provide accurate survey responses regarding a number of behaviors and attributes that we can validate with our administrative data. We discuss the best strategy to deal with inattentive respondents in surveys in light of our results.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41555442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reducing Item Nonresponse to Vote-Choice Questions: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Mexico","authors":"Mollie J Cohen, Kaitlen J Cassell","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfad002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Retrospective vote choice is a critical question asked in political science surveys. Yet, this question suffers from persistently high item nonresponse rates, which can bias estimates and limit scholars’ ability to make sound inferences. In this paper, we develop a sensitive survey technique to decrease nonresponse to the vote-choice question in a representative, face-to-face survey in Mexico City and Mexico State in 2018–2019. Respondents received different iterations of three treatments: an anonymity guarantee, a confidentiality reminder, and audio-assisted interviewing technology. The use of audio technology combined with a credible anonymity guarantee significantly improved item response. Both anonymity and confidentiality assurances improved the accuracy of response, which more closely resembled official results in the treatment conditions. We then evaluate two non-rival mechanisms that might drive our findings: beliefs about response anonymity and re-engagement with the survey. We find that increased perceptions of response anonymity are associated with improved item response.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134941980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joan Barceló, Greg Chih-Hsin Sheen, Hans H Tung, Wen-Chin Wu
{"title":"Experts or Politicians? Citizen Responses to Vaccine Endorsements across Five OECD Countries","authors":"Joan Barceló, Greg Chih-Hsin Sheen, Hans H Tung, Wen-Chin Wu","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfad008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad008","url":null,"abstract":"Who is more influential in shaping citizens' health-related behaviors, experts or politicians? We conduct five conjoint experiments on 6,255 residents of France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, asking them to evaluate COVID-19 vaccines alongside randomly varying endorsements from national politicians and medical professionals. In every country, our results show that citizens are more likely to rely on medical professionals, the experts, more than on politicians when choosing a COVID-19 vaccine. Even after accounting for citizens' political alignment with the government, our evidence reveals that politicians play a very limited role in shaping vaccine acceptance. These results have implications for the role of political elites in shaping people's behaviors amid a large-scale crisis.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134942337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Estimating the Between-Issue Variation in Party Elite Cue Effects","authors":"Ben M Tappin","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfac052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfac052","url":null,"abstract":"Party elite cues are among the most well-established influences on citizens’ political opinions. Yet, there is substantial variation in effect sizes across studies, constraining the generalizability and theoretical development of party elite cues research. Understanding the causes of variation in party elite cue effects is thus a priority for advancing the field. In this paper, I estimate the variation in party elite cue effects that is caused simply by heterogeneity in the policy issues being examined, through a reanalysis of data from existing research combined with an original survey experiment comprising 34 contemporary American policy issues. My estimate of the between-issue variation in effects is substantively large, plausibly equal to somewhere between one-third and two-thirds the size of the between-study variation observed in the existing literature. This result has important implications for our understanding of party elite influence on public opinion and for the methodological practices of party elite cues research.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"242 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138504612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Polarization Eh? Ideological Divergence and Partisan Sorting in the Canadian Mass Public","authors":"Eric Merkley","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfac047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfac047","url":null,"abstract":"There has been increasing concern among commentators and scholars about polarization in Canada. This note uses the Canadian Election Study from 1993 to 2019 to measure trends in ideological divergence, ideological consistency, and partisan-ideological sorting in the Canadian mass public. It finds only mixed evidence that Canadians are diverging ideologically and becoming more polarized—ideological distributions are unimodal and trends toward more dispersion are slight and driven entirely by the last two election cycles. Canadians are, however, becoming modestly more ideologically consistent and much more sorted—that is, partisanship, ideological identification, and policy beliefs are increasingly interconnected. These findings call for additional research on the causes and consequences of mass polarization in Canada and further efforts to situate these results, along with findings from the United States, in a comparative context.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"244 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138504611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Priming Fairness and Priming Constitutionality Impact the Effect of Partisan Self-Interest on Citizen Support for Election Reforms","authors":"Daniel R Biggers, Shaun Bowler","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Prior research suggests that citizen attitudes toward electoral laws and reforms derive from how individuals weigh two competing considerations: the rule’s procedural fairness and one’s partisan self-interest (or how they perceive the policy affects their party’s electoral prospects). Recent experimental work shows that despite a role for fairness concerns, policy support levels shift (at least to a degree) based on its anticipated impact on who votes. We examine how the presentation of the trade-off between fairness and partisan advantage influences election reform opinions. Using two sets of survey experiments, we find that priming fairness reduces, but does not eliminate, the effect of partisan self-interest in shaping policy evaluations. Priming a reform’s constitutionality so as to provide cover to infringe upon fairness considerations, however, does not exacerbate the impact of partisan self-interest on support for adoption. These results expand our understanding of how citizens weigh different factors when assessing electoral policies.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134977611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Before the Party Hijacks: The Limited Role of Party Cues in Appraisal of Low-Salience Policies—Experimental Evidence","authors":"Clareta Treger","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfac044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfac044","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 What shapes Americans’ policy preferences: partisanship or policy content? While previous studies have addressed this question, many of them focused on high-salience policies. This raises an identification challenge because the content of such policies contains party cues. The current study employs a diverse set of low-salience policies to discern the unique effects of party cues and policy content, before the issues are “hijacked” by the parties. These policies are embedded in an original conjoint experiment administered among a national US sample. The design enables me to assess the effects of policy content and partisan sponsorship orthogonally. Contrary to previous studies, I find that respondents are attentive to policy content on low-salience issues, and it influences their policy preferences similarly or even more than party cues, across policy domains. Moreover, the support patterns and levels of Democrats and Republicans for many low-salience policies are similar. Party cues, by contrast, polarize partisans’ preferences across domains.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45188514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lying for Trump? Elite Cue-Taking and Expressive Responding on Vote Method","authors":"Enrijeta Shino, Daniel A. Smith, Laura Uribe","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfac045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfac045","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Might elite cues affect how we vote? Extant literature focuses on effects of elite cues on candidate evaluation or policy preference, but we know little about how they might affect vote method preferences. Drawing on a large survey of validated Florida voters, including those who regularly vote by mail, we find that retrospective and prospective misreporting of vote method prior to the 2020 General Election was driven primarily by support for Trump. The president’s supporters who were most politically aware were most likely to disavow their own voting by mail and misreport their anticipated vote method in the November election. Understanding the effects—and limits—of elite cues on the politicization of self-reported political behavior has important implications for pollsters and campaigns, election administrators, voters, and the broader democratic electoral process.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44374993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does Social Desirability Bias Distort Survey Analyses of Ideology and Self-Interest? Evidence from a List Experiment on Progressive Taxation","authors":"Tobias Heide-Jørgensen","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfac050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfac050","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The relative importance of ideological orientations and material self-interest as determinants of political attitudes is still discussed. Using a novel list experiment on opposition to progressive taxation embedded in a large representative Danish online survey (N = 2,010), I study how social desirability concerns bias the conclusions survey researchers draw regarding the influence of self-interest (gauged by income) and ideology (measured by left-right self-identifications) on public opinion. I find that right-wingers are much less opposed to progressive taxation when attitudes are measured indirectly and unobtrusively by means of the list experiment relative to asking directly about their opinions. In fact, rightists are no more against progressive taxation than leftists and centrists. Furthermore, opposition to tax progressivity is considerably lower among low-income individuals when social desirability bias is addressed, thereby increasing the attitudinal gap between low- and high-income individuals. The implications of the findings are that survey research risks exaggerating the importance of ideological orientations and underestimating how much political views reflect material self-interest.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45297533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strategic Discrimination in the 2020 Democratic Primary","authors":"Jon Green, Brian F. Schaffner, Sam Luks","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfac051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfac051","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Primary voters frequently support the candidates they think have a greater chance of winning the general election over the candidates who most closely reflect their policy preferences—a perception referred to as “electability.” While electability is typically taken to mean ideological moderation, recent research highlights the potential for candidates’ demographic characteristics to affect such perceptions. Using a conjoint experiment conducted with a sample of nearly 3,000 likely Democratic primary voters in June 2019, we show that women and candidates of color were seen as less electable than their white, male counterparts despite being preferred more frequently, holding policy stances and general election strategies constant. These effects were independent of respondents’ hostile sexism and racial resentment, and mediation analysis indicates that electability concerns reduced overall support for women and candidates of color. The results replicate and extend recent findings related to “strategic discrimination” in the US electorate.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41380943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}