Second Paper: Political Attitudes as a Function of a Demographic Variable

The paper will have in independent variable that is some demographic characteristic of an individual chosen by the student. Obvious choices include income, race, gender, ethnicity, region of the country, occupation, education, and rural or urban residence. Religion may also be treated as a demographic variable.

The paper will have a dependent variable which will be some political attitude. The obvious choices are political issues that have a liberal or conservative side (abortion, gay rights, government involvement in health insurance, campaign finance reform). But other possible attitudes include trust in government, attitudes toward political institutions (Congress, the Supreme Court) and political figures, perceptions of the nation's economy and one's personal financial situation, etc.

The paper should consist of the following elements:

• Name the independent demographic variable and the dependent attitudinal variable.
• Lay out an hypothesis as to how you expect the independent variable to affect the dependent variable. You might want to look at Erikson and Tedin Chapter 7 ("Group Differences in Public Opinion") for examples of how to do this. We have also had extensive class discussions as to how different demographic variables might represent different individual interests, group intestest, socialization experiences, etc.
• Explain your data source or sources. Be sure to give the exact wording of the questions you use. Explain how categories are recoded -- if they are recoded.
• Present one or more cross-tabs of your demographic variable and your attitudinal item or items. One cross-tab is acceptable, but two or three would be better. Note: you are to use a single attitude as your dependent variable, but you may find two or three different questions that tap that attitude.
• Interpret the cross-tabs. Do they show the relationship you expected?
• Comment briefly on your results. If they were not as you hypothesized, speculate as to why, and suggest further tests.

Resources

http://csa.berkeley.edu:7502/archive.htm

The Berkeley web site is probably the most useful for this paper, since you can do your own crosstabs. The most useful resources will probably be the GSS Cumulative Datafile 1972-2006, the National Election Study (NES) 2004, and the National Election Study (NES) 2000.

National Election Studies -- Note that this site contains crosstabs of most of the items in the American National Election Studies, and you should check here if you are using NES data. It may save you the trouble of creating crosstabs on the Berkeley site.

The Gallup Poll

The Roper Center

The above link will only work on campus, unless you log into the library's proxy server.

To search for demographics in the database, but the concept you are searching for in the "keywords" field, and then put some demographic group ("Catholic," "white," etc.) in the "Narrow Search" box. Make sure that "Date" field allows searching for a wide range of dates. You may find nothing available if you search over only the last six month's polls.

Public Agenda Online

Program on International Policy Attitudes

Polling the Nations

The above link will only work on campus, unless you log into the library's proxy server.

Estimated length: 5 to 7 pages.