Kristi Andersen

Mass Belief Systems Revisited: Political Change and Attitude Structure

* This paper owes a great debt to my students in the National Opinion Research Center Training program, who did much to rekindle my interest in ideology. I would also like to thank Sidney Verba and Kenneth Prewitt for their intellectual contributions at various stages. The first draft of the paper was written while I was a research Fulbright Fellow at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. I would like to express my appreciation to the Fulbright Foundation for support during this period and to the University of Leiden for supporting the research. Additional support for myself and for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant GS 3155 and the Twentieth Century Fund. The data reported in this article come from seven separate surveys and the organization and presentation was a mammoth job in data management. This task could not have been accomplished without the efforts of Carol Ann Lugtigheid, Eric Lugtigheid, John R. Petrocik, Jaap Rozema, and Jaap van Poelgeest.

Working Women and Political Participation, 1952-1972

This paper examines the extent to which the sex differences in political participation (specifically participation in election campaigns) have narrowed over the last twenty years, and finds that the change is due to a particular group of women-those employed outside the home-who now participate at a rate equal to that of men. The possibility that sociodemographic changes in this group of women account for their increased participation is examined, as well as the connection between feminism and participation and the role of the 1972 election in mobilizing working women.

Gender and Student Evaluations of Teaching.

ture for its own sake. Rather, it is to set the intellectual stage for your work, clarifying what is known about a particular topic and what new (or different) can be discovered. While thoroughness in the literature review is a virtue, a more important one is developing a structured, coherent argument. It is useful in the early stages to find a book on which to model the structure of your dissertation. The model will provide you with guide posts. After having written the dissertations first chapter, for instance, you can get a sense of where to go next. The stronger the analogues between dissertation and book (in methodology, tone, and substantive focus), the more useful the guideposts.

Women, Work, and Political Attitudes

Cross-sectional comparisons of employed women and housewives have found significant differences in political opinions and political involvement, as well as differences on psychological variables such as self-esteem. This paper applies a quasi-experimental design to the 1972-1976 National Election Study panel, comparing employed women, housewives, and women who entered the labor force between 1972 and 1976, in order to examine the competing hypotheses of self-selection and socialization.

Stability and change in American politics : the coming of age of the generation of the 1960s

New updated! The latest book from a very famous author finally comes out. Book of stability and change in american politics the coming of age of the generation of the 1960s, as an amazing reference becomes what you need to get. Whats for is this book? Are you still thinking for what the book is? Well, this is what you probably will get. You should have made proper choices for your better life. Book, as a source that may involve the facts, opinion, literature, religion, and many others are the great friends to join with.

Assessing the Impact of a Quantitative Skills Course for Undergraduates.

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates the long-term benefits of a Syracuse University course offering, “Maxwell 201: Quantitative Methods for the Social Sciences” (MAX 201). The authors analyze data collected from class-administered pre- and post-tests and from a questionnaire sent to a random sample MAX 201 alumni to evaluate the extent to which students apply learned skills in the job market and as consumers of statistical information in a society that increasingly provides important information in complex quantitative forms. The data reveal six central findings that suggest that students benefit from the MAX 201 curriculum as members of the workforce and as citizens.

Reflections on the Achievements of Sidney Verba

Abstract Sidney Verba’s distinguished career, particularly his books, demonstrate a talent for finding superb collaborators, a deep normative concern about the health of civil society, and a commitment to using social science methods to understand the working of democratic systems. A re-reading of these books shows the development of an increasingly complex theory of political participation undergirding a complex portrait of American representative democracy, with all its flaws and strengths.

Debates on U.S. Immigration. By Judith Gans, Elaine M. Replogle, and Daniel J. Tichenor (eds). Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2012. Xviii, 624 pages.

How might this massive and very interesting book be used by scholars of migration? Because its editors have arranged their material into debates, or “point/counterpoint” chapters, its contents are particularly well-suited to courses that are similarly organized around current debates about immigration and immigration policy. Debates on U.S. Immigration is over 600 pages long and boasts an impressive range of contributors: scholars from a variety of disciplines, think-tank analysts, and policy advocates of various stripes. It is organized in three parts, covering “Political Debates”, “Economic, Labor, and Demographic Debates”, and “Social and Cultural Debates”. Of course with such a complex subject, no categorization scheme is perfect, and it goes without saying that many of the topics placed in the economic or cultural sections – for example, discussions of H-1B visas, worksite enforcement, English as the official language, and racial profiling – have extensive political implications. For the past 7 years, I have been team-teaching a large lower-division undergraduate course called “Critical Issues for the U.S.” This course is framed by ideas about the obligations of democratic citizenship, the responsibilities of political leaders in democratic systems, and notions of American values. These topics are then brought to bear on the “critical issues”, which most recently have been education, health care, and immigration. We spend three weeks on each issue, with each unit culminating in an essay in which students are asked to reflect on the readings and make a coherent, considered argument. In this class, we need good, reliable, clearly presented background information, including historical context and appropriate data. An important goal of the course is to get students to understand the importance of grounding arguments in agreedupon facts. We also want clear arguments, at least some of which connect explicitly or implicitly to what we have read and discussed about American democratic values. Information providing good overviews of particular issues abounds in this book. A few sections that seem especially useful are the very first chapter (“Legal Immigration Selection System”); the demographic data in the Introduction to the second section; the discussion of remittances in Chapter 16; Judith Gans’s introduction to the third section (“Social and Cultural Debates”), which provides a bit of historical context; and the “point” portion of Chapter 25 on cultural assimilation, which explains the commonly used metaphors of “melting pot” and “tossed salad”. I would add that Chapter 25 (because its “counterpoint” section is so focused on linguistic assimilation) would provide the groundwork for a good discussion of alternative ways of defining, conceptualizing, and measuring “assimilation”. I have mixed feelings about the point-counterpoint chapters where one person takes two sides. On the one hand, from a pedagogical point of view, this is terrific. I often play devil’s advocate in class discussions and want to persuade students that they should be able to figure out good arguments for positions they do not “really” agree with. The authors who take on these chapters offer vivid examples of this capability, including Kathryn Miller on immigrant detention under Obama and Karey Leong on the naturalization process (extra points to this chapter for its explicit comparisons with the process in other countries).

125.00.

A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen. By Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 253p.

A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen

19.00. Should we be really worried about declining public engagement? Or should we accept that it is merely changing shape? This book describes substantial alterations in the ways Americans are involved in public life, particularly younger citizens, and analyzes a wide range of empirical data with the goal of understanding the implications—both negative and positive—of these emerging patterns of participation.