Hard Choices, Easy Answers (eBook)

Values, Information, and American Public Opinion

R. Michael Alvarez, John Brehm (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-22019-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Those who seek to accurately gauge public opinion must first ask themselves: Why are certain opinions highly volatile while others are relatively fixed? Why are some surveys affected by question wording or communicative medium (e.g., telephone) while others seem immune? In Hard Choices, Easy Answers, R. Michael Alvarez and John Brehm develop a new theory of response variability that, by reconciling the strengths and weaknesses of the standard approaches, will help pollsters and scholars alike better resolve such perennial problems. Working within the context of U.S. public opinion, they contend that the answers Americans give rest on a variegated structure of political predispositions--diverse but widely shared values, beliefs, expectations, and evaluations. Alvarez and Brehm argue that respondents deploy what they know about politics (often little) to think in terms of what they value and believe. Working with sophisticated statistical models, they offer a unique analysis of not just what a respondent is likely to choose, but also how variable those choices would be under differing circumstances. American public opinion can be characterized in one of three forms of variability, conclude the authors: ambivalence, equivocation, and uncertainty. Respondents are sometimes ambivalent, as in attitudes toward abortion or euthanasia. They are often equivocal, as in views about the scope of government. But most often, they are uncertain, sure of what they value, but unsure how to use those values in political choices.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.10.2020
• Zusatzinfo: 55 line illus. 46 tables.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Empirische Sozialforschung
• Schlagworte: Abortion • Abortion Debate • Abortion Law • Abortion-rights movements • Addition • Affirmative Action • African Americans • Ambiguity • Ambivalence • americans • Anti-Semitism • Attitude • Attitude (Psychology) • authoritarianism • Beliefs • Black • Brehm, John • bureaucrat • casualties • Catholic • Central Tendency • choice modelling • coefficient • Confirmatory factor analysis • Consideration • Converse, Philip • Correlation and dependence • Criticism • Democracy • Determinant • Donnelly Marketing Service • Downs, Anthony • Dummy variable (statistics) • Ecological Inference • egalitarianism • Elite • Employment • employment discrimination • Equivocation • estimation • euthanasia • Euthanasia in the United States • Explanation • Factor Analysis • Feldman, Stanley • Feminism • foreign policy • Gay Rights • General Social Survey • General Social Survey (GSS) • Heterogenity • Heteroskedastic choice • humanitarianism • Ideology • Incest • income • indictment • Individualism • Individualism: economic • inference • internal conflict • Internal Revenue Service • Jackson, John E. • Jews • Kinder, Donald R. • Lazarfeld, Paul • Liberal conservatism • Likert Scale • Measurement • media • Michigan School • military elite • National Election Studies (NES) • national security • Negative relationship • Normal distribution • of education • Operation Rescue • Opinion Poll • Opportunism • percentage • Peter Feaver • Physician • Piazza, Thomas • Planned Parenthood v. Casey • Policy • Political Campaign • Political Party • Political Philosophy • Political Science • Politician • Politics • Prediction • predispositions • Prejudice • Probability • probit • Probit Model • public administration • Public Opinion • Public Policy • Quantity • Racial Policy • Racial politics • Racism • Random Effects Model • Religiosity • Respondent • Responsiveness • result • reverse discrimination • Sample Size • Social Inequality • social issue • Social Science • standard error • statistical significance • Statistics • Structuring • Symbolic Racism • Tax • The Other Hand • Uncertainty • Variance • Variance function • Voting • war • Webster v. Reproductive Health Services • welfare • white americans
• ISBN-10: 0-691-22019-0 / 0691220190
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-22019-2 / 9780691220192