711 Discussion Questions for Approaches and Methods

 

II.         Approaches and Methods: How Can Public Opinion Be Measured?

  1. Richard Perloff, The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the 20th Century. Part I, “Foundations.”
  2. Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro, The Rational Public, 1994, chapters 1-2.
  3. John Zaller and Stanley Feldman. 1992. "A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions or Revealing Preferences?" American Journal of Political Science, 36(3): 579-616.
  4. Donald Kinder, "On Behalf of an Experimental Political Science" and "Coming to Grips with the Holy Ghost," in Donald Kinder and Thomas R. Pallfrey (Eds.), Experimental Foundations of Political Science, 1993, pp. 1-52.
  5. David Sears. 1988. "College sophomores in the laboratory: Influences of a narrow data base on psychologists' views of human nature." In Letita Peplau, et al. (eds.), Readings in Social Psychology.

 

Perloff

 

Questions tomorrow, maybe

 

Page and Shapiro

1.       Warm up question: Are the masses asses? Is there a tendency toward false consensus in branding the masses asses when they disagree with us and thinking they are wise when they agree? Were the masses asses when they stuck with Bill Clinton during Monicagate and the impeachment proceedings? Were they asses when they supported the Iraq war, even when the primary rationale for the war was flawed?

2.       Why, according to Page and Shapiro, are the revisionist arguments extolling the virtues of rational ignorance unsatisfactory? What  are some of the problems with early studies that concluded the masses are asses?  

3.       Explain and then evaluate Page and Shapiro’s arguments for collective rationality. Would you feel confident that the U.S. would end up with an intelligent MX missile policy based on the logic of this argument?

4.       On page 13 (?), Page and Shapiro outline the characteristics of rational collective policy preferences. Using these characteristics as standards for evaluating collective rationality, can we say that public opinion on the war in Iraq is rational? What about whites’ opinions supporting American apartheid in the U.S. until the latter part of the 1960s? 

5.       Is it possible to assess rationality at the collective level? Are normative yardsticks designed to measure rationality and competence at the individual and collective levels defined well enough to make such standards useful?  In what ways are Page and Shapiro’s arguments useful or not?

Zaller and Feldman:

1.       This is a classic and heavily cited article that seeks to provide a new theory of the survey response and, in the process, provides something of a compromise between two views on response stability by Converse (errors are in respondents) and Achen (errors are in measures). In developing their theory of the survey response, Zaller and Feldman distinguish between Converse's and Achen's explanations of response instability.  What are the differences between these two explanations and the problems with each? In what ways does Zaller and Feldman’s model agree with and yet depart from each of these two explanations?

2.       What are the three axioms of the Zaller and Feldman’s theory of the survey response and where do they come from?

3.       Overall, how would you assess the fit of the model (and its 18 deductions!) with the survey data the authors explore?

4.       Can we use their model of the survey response to understand  the formation of public opinion outside the survey setting—i.e., in the real world? If so, what are some of the broader implications of the theory for understanding response stability, persuasion, and democracy? Are survey responses “real,” or just epiphenomenal constructions? How malleable or fixed is public opinion? What implications does the model have for fluidity of building coalitions of support or opposition among the public? What implications does the model have for helping to explain media influence on public opinion?

5.       Pick an issue on which public opinion has moved or hasn’t moved and do your best to apply this theory to explain public opinion on this issue.

6.       How might you critique this theory? Does it have enough axioms? Do the deductions follow directly from the axioms?  Can it be tested rigorously? Can it be falsified?   

7.       Questions to ponder now and later: The model, which is admittedly sparse, borrows selectively from theories of information processing, attitude change, framing and so on.  If one advantage of the model is parsimony, what are some of the costs involved with relying on this more abbreviated model? What is the range and the power of the model, in your view?  More generally, what are some of the major problems with the model, as you see them, both theoretically and in its application?

Kinder and Sears:

  1.  According to Kinder and Palfrey, what is “triangulation across multiple methods” and what are some of its advantages? What are some of the strengths of experimental research, as well as some of its disadvantages? How could the study of political behavior (defined broadly) benefit from increased reliance on experiments?
  2. According to Sears, what are some of the problems associated with the heavy reliance on experiments in social psychology? Is the problem Sears is addressing due more to the subject population, or the method of experimental research? Are the problems more or less severe or are they different for political scientists who study political behavior (e.g., racial attitudes, media influence, etc.)?
  3. After this week’s readings, do you have any confidence whatsoever in social scientists’ ability to measure political attitudes and behavior?