J. Merrill Shanks

Personal and Political Sources of Political Alienation

This paper began by reviewing several major conceptual and methodological difficulties surrounding the measurement of political alienation/allegiance and proceeded to describe the level and the sources of alienation (as measured by our preliminary indicator, the PAI) within the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. We defined political alienation as a relatively enduring sense of estrangement from or rejection of the prevailing political system and emphasized the importance of distinguishing this attitude from disapproval of incumbent officeholders.

Policy Directions and Presidential Leadership: Alternative Interpretations of the 1980 Presidential Election

As the Reagan administration neared the end of its first full year in office, interpretations of the meaning of the 1980 presidential election were still as varied as the political positions of analysts and commentators. The politically dominant interpretation, promoted by the new administration and its supporters, was that the election provided a mandate to bring about several fundamental changes in the role of government in American social and economic life. In recommendations whose scope had not been matched since the first days of Franklin Roosevelts New Deal, the Reagan administration set about responding to what it understood to be popular demands for reduced government spending and taxes, expansion of the national defence establishment, limitation of environmental protection in favour of the development of energy resources, and a myriad of other tasks designed to encourage free enterprise by ‘getting government off the backs of the people’. With varying degrees of enthusiasm for the new administrations programmes, scores of Democratic politicians shared the interpretation of Reagans victory as a new electoral mandate which rejected many of the fundamental policies of Democratic administrations from Roosevelt to Carter. This interpretation of the ‘meaning’ of the 1980 election was expressed by Democratic congressmen of many political colours who decried the bankruptcy of their own leadership and affirmed the victors sense of mandate by supporting the Presidents various legislative programmes.

Stability of Support for the Political System: The Initial Impact of Watergate

Political cynicism has increased sharply over the last decade r (Miller and Miller, 1974). The Watergate affair has apparently heightened an already growing public suspicion of the honesty and sincerity of public officials, but whether it has also resulted in a loss of faith in the integrity of the political order as a whole remains unclear. This paper attempts to assess the initial impact of Watergate on public attitudes toward the political system. In particular, we shall investigate whether the onset of this major political scandal fostered a rise in political alienation. In doing so, we hope to illustrate some of the

Telephone Sampling Bias in Surveying Disability

Results of the California Disability Survey indicate that telephone interviewing is well suited for undertaking disability studies that provide (1) estimates of subgroups of the disabled population, including those that are statistically rare: (2) information on current and anticipated areas of policy concern; and (3) information for geographic areas important in rehabilitation program planning. Although these objectives necessitated a large sample size and a complex instrument, the costs and timeliness of telephone interviewing enabled the survey objectives to be reached. This paper discusses the advantages of telephone interviewing, as well as biases inherent in its use. The magnitude of the bias from the omission of nontelephone households is assessed, and the results confirm that the omission of nontelephone households introduces only minor biases into estimates for the total working-age population. A method of weighting is developed and illustrated.

The California Disability Survey: Design and Execution of a Computer-Assisted Telephone Study

This article discusses the study objectives and survey methods associated with the California Disability Survey (CDS), a large-scale telephone study of the California household population. The CDS project was designed to estimate the prevalence of disability and disabling conditions for the state as a whole and in a variety of smaller administrative areas, and to assess the service needs of the disabled and the degree to which they utilize existing forms of governmental assistance. The CDS project was also the first large-scale academic or governmental study to use the new survey methods associated with computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). This article reviews the rationale for the general CDS design and its use of computer-assisted methods, and emphasizes those aspects of the CDS experience that may be relevant for other large-scale studies in the area of human services.

Machine readable documentation of social science data: compatibility and standardization in codebooks

Mr. Chairman, like other people in the room, I believe our major purpose should be a lively discussion of alternative strategies for standardization, so I will try to be brief in presenting my own point of view.