Craig Leonard Brians

Negative Campaign Advertising: Demobilizer or Mobilizer?

With political campaigns becoming increasingly adversarial, scholars have recently given some much-needed attention to the impact of negative advertising on turnout.In a widely recognized Review article and subsequent book, Ansolabehere and his colleagues (1994, 1995) contend that attack advertising drives potential voters away from the polls. We dispute the generalizability of these claims outside of the experimental setting. Using NES survey data as well aggregate sources, we subject this previous research to rigorous real-world testing. The survey data directly contradict Ansolabehere et al.s findings, yielding evidence of a turnout advantage for those recollecting negative presidential campaign advertising. In attempting to replicate Ansolabehere et al’s earlier aggregate results we uncover quite significant discrepancies and inconsistencies in their dataset. This analysis leads to the conclusion that their aggregate study is hopelessly flawed. We must conclude that attack advertising’s demobilization dangers are greatly exaggerated by Ansolabehere et al., while they completely miss negative political advertising’s turnout benefits -- at least in voters’ own context.

Women for Women? Gender and Party Bias in Voting for Female Candidates

In recent years, popular commentators have suggested that the Republican party could narrow the gender gap by nominating women candidates. This proposition assumes that (at least some) women voters’ partisan identification may be trumped by an affinity with their gender. I evaluate the claim that women voters are often induced to cross party lines on election day to support a woman candidate. Analyzing more than a decade of men’s and women’s voting behavior when male and female candidates face one another, I offer evidence that female candidates gain marginally greater support from their own gender. In a relationship not present with other male or female candidates, Democratic women candidates who face GOP men strongly benefit from Republican women voters’ crossover support.

Election Day Registration's Effect on U.S. Voter Turnout

Objective. Early voter registration deadlines make voting more difficult for many American citizens. In an attempt to facilitate voting, several U.S. states now permit registration on election day, at the height of the campaign. This article examines the turnout effects of adopting election day registration (EDR) and other smaller reductions in closing dates. Methods. Primarily using the Current Population Study (1972–1996), we estimate the turnout advantage of EDR for citizens having low, middle and high socioeconomic status. Results. The elimination of closing dates, through EDR, is predicted to produce about a seven-percentage-point turnout boost in the average state. Those having a high school education and middle incomes are expected to see the largest turnout gains, with the less educated and poorer citizens doing almost as well. No evidence is found to link the implementation of EDR to subsequent changes in the electorate’s partisan balance. Conclusions. Even the most dramatic easing of voter registration costs has a modest effect on the total number of voters and little impact on the long-standing skew toward greater representation of those having higher status in the voting electorate of the United States.

When Registration Barriers Fall, Who Votes? An Empirical Test of a Rational Choice Model

It is well known that those with higher SES characteristics tend to vote at higher rates in U.S. elections. Over the past several decades many proponents of eased voter registration requirements have predicted that liberalizing voter registration laws will significantly improve turnout, especially among the least well- educated and the poor. In this article we offer a rational choice model of turnout that leads us to expect the greatest turnout gains from virtually eliminating voter registration costs will instead accrue to those with medium income and education. We test this prediction longitudinally over the period 1972–1992 using a vast survey and a natural experiment comparing voters in states that adopted election day registration (EDR) with those residing in states maintaining more traditional closing dates. Contrary to much of the literature, citizens with medium education and medium income voted more under EDR, as the model predicts. We conclude that the methods used here better capture and empirically identify the curvilinear relationship between voter registration laws and the turnout probabilities at various SES levels.

Empirical political analysis : quantitative and qualitative research methods

PART I. INTRODUCTION Chapter 1. Research as a Process PART II. PREPARING TO DO RESEARCH Chapter 2. Explaining the Political World: Building Theories and Hypotheses Chapter 3. Developing Your Literature Review: What Others Say About Your Topic Chapter 4. Designing Your Research and Choosing Your Qualitative and Quantitative Methods Chapter 5. From Abstract to Concrete: Operationalization and Measurement Chapter 6. Experimental Research Methods Chapter 7. Who, What, Where, When: The Problem of Sampling PART III. QUANTITATIVE METHODS Chapter 8. Survey Research Chapter 9. Combining Multiple Measures: Using Scaling Techniques Chapter 10. Content Analysis Chapter 11. Studying Groups with Aggregate Data Chapter 12. Comparative Research PART IV. ANALYZING QUANTITATIVE DATA Chapter 13. Social Network Analysis: Finding Structure in a Complex World Chapter 14. Data Coding Chapter 15. Describing the Data Chapter 16. Statistics I: Summarizing Distributions on One Variable Chapter 17. Statistics II: Examining Relationships between Two Variables Chapter 18. Statistics III: Examining Relationships among Several Variables PART V. QUALITATIVE METHODS Chapter 19. Direct Observation Chapter 20. Focus Group Methodologies Chapter 21. Elite and Specialized Interviewing PART VI. CONCLUSION Chapter 22. Writing (and Reading) the Research Report Chapter 23. Summary Appendix A. Statistical Tables Appendix B. Ethical Standard in Empirical Research

Partisan Turnout Bias in Midterm Legislative Elections

: Lower salience elections present greater opportunities for representational bias at the polls than do elections with higher levels of political interest. We hypothesize that turnout bias is most likely to occur during midterm congressional elections in which there are clear short-term forces that exploit the low turnout setting. The effects of these forces are more likely to be observable among registered nonvoters than citizens who are not registered to vote because registrants have access to the polls and are likely to have voted in previous presidential contests. Using midterm National Election Study data from 1978 to 1998, we find that registered nonvoters are frequently more Democratic than midterm election voters, particularly in 1994 and 1998. The historic 1994 congressional election seat losses for Democrats may be partially explained by the finding that voters going to the polls were clearly more conservative than registered nonvoters.

Two Views of a Conference Presentation: An Undergraduate's First Research Conference Experience

My first research conference experience began long before the February 2009 conference date. My experience presenting professional research at the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference started when I began working on an assessment project with Professor Craig Brians in March 2008. Let me introduce myself. I am Tyler Garaffa, an undergraduate double major in Political Science and Economics at Virginia Tech. Prof. Brians is my Honors Thesis advisor. Before I started working on research projects with Dr. Brians, I had written class papers but had never seen an entire original data collection project from start to finish. Therefore, many of the steps in a complete project were new experiences for me. In spring 2008, Prof. Brians and I started collecting data for an information literacy assessment, surveying students in Political Science Research Methods courses and International Studies capstone seminars. Of course, the project began much earlier. We started by gathering scholarly research on information literacy, designing a study instrument, obtaining Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, visiting classes, and recruiting research subjects. The data collection required the most independent effort from me. Just before the end of the spring 2008 term, Prof. Brians and I walked to each scheduled computer lab, and I stood at a podium at the front of the room and led each session. I welcomed the research subjects and then read aloud each instruction from the research protocol. I answered their questions as we were obtaining consent from them. Additionally, I timed each section of the research. Once we had gathered the data, I spent most of summer 2008 coding the information we obtained. Prof. Brians’ research schedule required that I be in the office

Taking the Temperature: Implications for Adoption of Election Day Registration, State-Level Voter Turnout, and Life Expectancy

We consider the neglected importance of temperature as an explanatory variable. We show that: (1) colder states have turnout that is high relative to the national average; (2) the coldest states in the United States were more likely to adopt Election Day Registration (EDR) than other states, and very hot states never did so; and (3) those who live in colder states live longer. Drawingon the insights ofNelsonPolsby,NoelCoward, Nancy Mitford, Montesquieu, and Tatu Vanhanen,we argue for the importance of temperature as an explanatory variable. Nelson Polsby (1986) has largely credited air-conditioningwith both the economic development of the South in the post-World War II period, and Florida’s growth as the nation’s retirement capital. Nancy Mitford, following up on intuitions of George Orwell in “Keep the Apsidistra Flying,” has called attention to the peculiarities of Love in a Cold Climate (1949). And, of course, who can forget Noel Coward’s legendary observation that only “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in themidday sun” (Coward 1931).1 Relatedly, Montesquieu observed long ago that liberal republicanism has yet to be successful in hot climates. Building on this insight, Vanhanen (2004) uses contemporary data to demonstrate that countries with high temperatures have low levels of democratization (a correlation between a nation’s mean temperature and its Vanhanen index of democracy of .57)—a factwhich, if fully appreciated, might have countered US efforts to impose democracy on Iraq during the 2000s.2 The particular focus of our present research is on the relationship between temperature and political participation. Here, we look at the relationship between temperature and voter turnout in the United States, and between temperature and the decision to adopt Election Day Registration (EDR). In addition, we offer a new and intriguing empirical finding about the link between temperature and longevity that nicely complements earlier work on longevity-inducing features of holding high political office (Wuffle, Brunell, and Koetzle 1997). TEMPERATURE AND TURNOUT The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) mandated states’ adoption ofmeasures tomake registration easier.3 Although not incorporated into theNVRA’s focus onmotor voter and agencybased registration procedures, EDR may be seen as lowering citizens’ turnout barriers more than any other reform because it permits both registration and turnout at the apex of the political campaign on election day (Brians and Grofman 1999; Brians and Grofman 2001). We may identify three different “waves” of EDR adoption, the first before and the next two after the passage of the NVRA. “Wave 1” states adopted EDR prior to the 1976 presidential election.4 “Wave 2” came into play in the 1996 election, while “Wave 3” occurred just before the 2008 election. Table 1 shows 2004 turnout levels of states with and without EDR. In summarizing the findings of table 1, a political scientist might conclude that (1) EDR leads to higher turnout, and (2) states in the North are more likely to adopt EDR. The direct inspiration for this article comes from an observation by students in the second author’s freshman US government AWuffle is associate to professor in the department of political science and the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. His research has found broad exposure, if not acceptance, in the discipline since the early 1970s, with articles appearing in such journals as the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Simulation and Games, Mathematics Magazine, and PS: Political Science & Politics. AWufflemay be contacted Shani Brasier at sbraiser@uci.edu. Craig Leonard Brians is associate professor and associate chair in the department of political science atVirginiaTech.He is the principal author of Empirical PoliticalAnalysis, 8th edition (Longman 2011), and may well use this article as a cautionary tale in an upcoming edition of this research methods text. His (actual) research has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Public Choice, Journal of Political Science Education, and other journals. He can be reached at cbrians@vt.edu Kristine Coulter is a doctoral student in the department of political science and a Fellow of the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine. She may be contacted at kcoulter@uci.edu Fea tu res 78 PS • January 2012 doi:10.1017/S1049096511001685 and politics course who, after eyeballing the data in table 1, suggested, on the one hand, that colder climates lead to higher turnout and, on the other hand, that colder stateswere especially likely to adopt EDR. In the first part of this article we statistically test the accuracy of each of these two claims. We get an intuitive sense of the relationship between temperature and turnout by comparing figure 1 with figure 2. The first map categorizes states by turnout level in 2004;5 the second map classifies states by their mean November temperature (averaged over two decades).6 Because we have selected map legend coding having a similar intensity scale, the continuity between the two maps is visually apparent: Those living in colder states are more likely to vote. The scatter plot in figure 3 compares 2004 turnout with mean November temperature by state. The associated bivariate regression generates an adjusted R2 of .47 (p .00000002).7 It would appear that a three-point increase inmean temperature level (Fahrenheit) converts to about a one-point decrease in turnout. EXPLAININGTHE ADOPTION OF EDR The nine states that adopted EDR in any of the three waves, or like North Dakota which has no voter registration requirement, average a 34.3 degree temperature in November, as compared to 48.8 degrees in the 41 other states and the District of Columbia.8 This 14 degree temperature difference is significant at the p .0001 level.9 Moreover, none of the hottest states in the country has adopted EDR. Indeed, taking EDRadoption as the dummydependent variable, and using just November temperature as the independent variable in a bivariate logistic regression, the result is statistically significant at the p .007 level (with a Nagelkerke pseudo R2 of .57). THETHIRDWAVE OF EDR ADOPTION BuildingonDarylBem’s (2011) seminal experimental evidence for the existence of ESP and precognition, one of our ancillary contributions is to show how states that had not yet adopted EDR in 2004, but were just about to (the Third Wave of EDR adoption) Table 1 Voter Turnout andVoter Registration Laws in 2004 State 2004 VAP Turnout Voter Registration Rule State 2004 VAP Turnout Voter Registration Rule Minnesota 75.1 EDRWave 1 Kentucky 59.0 NVRA Wisconsin 72.6 EDRWave 1 Maryland 59.0 NVRA Maine 72.5 EDRWave 1 Florida 57.9 NVRA Alaska 69.3 NVRA Utah 57.0 NVRA New Hampshire 69.0 EDRWave 2 Illinois 56.7 NVRA South Dakota 68.8 NVRA New Jersey 56.3 NVRA Iowa 68.1 EDRWave 3 Oklahoma 56.3 NVRA Oregon 67.4 NVRA Alabama 56.2 NVRA North Dakota 67.1 No Registration North Carolina 56.0 NVRA Ohio 66.5 NVRA Tennessee 55.4 NVRA Montana 65.3 EDRWave 3 Mississippi 55.4 NVRA Wyoming 65.3 EDRWave 2 New Mexico 55.0 NVRA Michigan 64.9 NVRA Indiana 54.4 NVRA Vermont 64.8 NVRA West Virginia 54.2 NVRA Missouri 64.4 NVRA Rhode Island 53.8 NVRA Colorado 62.7 NVRA South Carolina 52.9 NVRA Washington 62.2 NVRA Arkansas 52.5 NVRA Pennsylvania 61.7 NVRA District of Columbia 52.3 NVRA Delaware 61.3 NVRA Georgia 52.1 NVRA Connecticut 60.6 NVRA New York 51.0 NVRA Massachusetts 60.2 NVRA Arizona 48.8 NVRA Nebraska 60.1 NVRA Nevada 48.8 NVRA Idaho 60.1 EDRWave 2 California 47.6 NVRA Kansas 59.7 NVRA Texas 46.9 NVRA Virginia 59.6 NVRA Hawaii 45.7 NVRA

Discovery Systems are No Different: We Must Still Teach Searchers How to Become Researchers

Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/charleston An indexed, print copy of the Proceedings is also available for purchase at: http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/charleston. You may also be interested in the new series, Charleston Insights in Library, Archival, and Information Sciences. Find out more at: http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/charleston-insights-library-archivaland-information-sciences.

Discovery Systems: Analyzing the Gap Between Professors' Expectations and Student Behavior

Professors want their students to develop habits of mind that empower them to cross the gap that separates opportunistic searchers from thoughtful, purposive researchers. The marketing of discovery systems (e.g., Proquest/Serials Solutions’ Summon, EBSCO Discovery Service, etc.) to academic libraries suggests that even neophytes will be able to easily maximize their research skills using these tools. These multifaceted search tools certainly do provide rich and accessible initial search results. But observation shows great disparities between search results that students submit as satisfactory and relevant and what their professors want them to select. Perhaps, pedagogically speaking, discovery systems are too rich, too multifaceted, and too beguiling for many students’ own good as they are guided through the transition from searcher to researcher. Focusing on the question of how students understand and apply the idea of relevance among articles identified by Summon, this presentation updates preliminary findings we presented at last year’s Charleston Conference. Our ongoing research finds strikingly similar research-skills deficits in students’ use of Summon to discover and select related journal articles. Spanning several academic terms, our qualitative and quantitative results reveal: (1) that students’ perceptions of relations among articles are often cued by discovery systems more than by the actual content of articles and (2) this deficit requires professors to adapt instruction (including assignments) to compensate. This presentation is an update to one we made at last years Charleston Conference (Brians and Pencek, 2011). It is a report of a modest investigation into Virginia Techs implementation of the Summon discovery system. Unlike the bulk of the research (and certainly outreach and promotional information from discovery system vendors), our concern is with satisfaction of users one step removed from the actual studentsearchers: their professors, who are more concerned with the efficacy of students completing research assignments than with students’ subjective reaction to a tool. Pedagogically, our concern has been to advance our students’ approach to information from being merely searchers to being researchers. Where mere searchers are incrementalists, researchers are purposive, designing and revising their inquiry purposes and rationales in mind. Searchers want to find something, even if problematic, with the least effort; researchers understand that null results increase knowledge and rethink their projects accordingly. Where searchers reflexively employ familiar tools and techniques, researchers evaluate for their fitness to their particular research purpose. Where searchers all too frequently outsource judgments of relevance to their tools, researchers assess the results of their inquiry in light of their research goal. Searchers feel that finding good-enough information should be easy; researchers understand that finding the right information and applying it appropriately takes work—often hard work. In other words, our approach to information literacy and information literacy instruction is to start at the earliest time to help students become conversant with the habits of mind of social science researchers, along with the appropriate methodologies and