L. J. Zigerell

Science knowledge and biblical literalism

Biblical literalists are often described as scientific illiterates, but little if any empirical research has tested this claim. Analysis of a sixteen-item battery from the 2008 US General Social Survey revealed that literalists possess less science knowledge than those with other views of Scripture, but that much of this deficit can be attributed to demographic factors and unequal educational attainment. The marginal direct effect of biblical belief suggests that literalism is not incompatible with knowledge of science and, therefore, the best avenue for increasing science knowledge among literalists may be to foster interest in science and design science courses to attenuate any perceived conflict between science and religion.

Senator Opposition to Supreme Court Nominations: Reference Dependence on the Departing Justice

Research indicates that senators evaluate U.S. Supreme Court nominations on two ideological dimensions: the distance between themselves and the nominee, and the potential effect confirmation would have on the Court median. My analysis of nominations from 1968 to 2006 provides evidence that senators are also influenced by the ideological contrast between the nominee and the departing justice.

Distinguishing Racism from Ideology: A Methodological Inquiry

Research using symbolic racism has provided evidence that racial bias has widespread social and political impact in the United States, influencing phenomena such as opposition to policies designed to help blacks, disapproval of Barack Obama, and membership in the Tea Party. However, symbolic racism has a racial component and a conservative component, so many researchers have attempted to isolate the racial component of symbolic racism with statistical control; however, the literature lacks guidelines about the effectiveness of such statistical control. To address this shortcoming, I report results from two studies using the 2012 ANES Time Series Study. Study 1 provides guidelines for the effect size necessary to support an inference that variation in a dependent variable is influenced by the racial component of symbolic racism. The nature of this racial component has been inconsistently described in the literature, so Study 2 reports evidence that symbolic racism sometimes predicts black opposition to policies designed to help blacks, which suggests that the characterization of the residual effect of symbolic racism as racial animosity is stronger than warranted by the data. Together, these studies can help researchers better identify when racial bias is an influence and better understand what this influence represents.

Is the gender citation gap in international relations driven by elite papers

This paper reanalyses data from a recent widely-discussed study reporting that female-authored papers published in top international relations journals received fewer citations than equivalent male-authored papers. The reanalysis indicated that the gender citation gap is largely limited to elite papers, defined either as papers in the right tail of the citation distribution or as papers published in the most familiar journals. Results suggest that the original study’s recommendation to consider the gender citation gap in promotion and review requires more data and a better understanding of the factors that influence whether a paper enters the discipline’s elite.

Developing Standards for Post-Hoc Weighting in Population-Based Survey Experiments

Weighting techniques are employed to generalize results from survey experiments to populations of theoretical and substantive interest. Although weighting is often viewed as a second-order methodological issue, these adjustment methods invoke untestable assumptions about the nature of sample selection and potential heterogeneity in the treatment effect. Therefore, although weighting is a useful technique in estimating population quantities, it can introduce bias and also be used as a researcher degree of freedom. We review survey experiments published in three major journals from 2000–2015 and find that there are no standard operating procedures for weighting survey experiments. We argue that all survey experiments should report the sample average treatment effect (SATE). Researchers seeking to generalize to a broader population can weight to estimate the population average treatment effect (PATE), but should discuss the construction and application of weights in a detailed and transparent manner given the possibility that weighting can introduce bias.

Reducing Political Bias in Political Science Estimates

Political science researchers have flexibility in how to analyze data, how to report data, and whether to report on data. A review of examples of reporting flexibility from the race and sex discrimination literature illustrates how research design choices can influence estimates and inferences. This reporting flexibility—coupled with the political imbalance among political scientists—creates the potential for political bias in reported political science estimates. These biases can be reduced or eliminated through preregistration and preacceptance, with researchers committing to a research design before completing data collection. Removing the potential for reporting flexibility can raise the credibility of political science research.

Potential publication bias in the stereotype threat literature: Comment on Nguyen and Ryan (2008).

Stereotype threat is a widely cited psychological phenomenon with purported important real-world consequences. Reanalysis of data from the Nguyen and Ryan (2008) stereotype threat meta-analysis indicated the presence of small study effects in which the effect size for less precise studies was larger than the effect size for more precise studies. Four methods to adjust the meta-analysis effect size for potential publication bias produced divergent estimates, from essentially no change, to a 50% decrease, to a reduction of the estimated effect size to near zero. Caution is therefore warranted both for citing Nguyen and Ryan (2008) as evidence of a meaningful stereotype threat effect and for claiming that the stereotype threat effect size is negligible based on these adjustments, given that the detected small study effects might be due to unexplored moderators instead of publication bias.

Inferential selection bias in a study of racial bias: Revisiting ‘Working twice as hard to get half as far’

This study revisits an important recent article about racial bias and finds that many of its inferences are weakened when we analyze the data more completely. DeSante in 2013 reported evidence from a survey experiment indicating that Americans reward Whites more than Blacks for hard work but penalize Blacks more than Whites for laziness. However, the present study demonstrates that these inferences were based on an unrepresentative selection of possible analyses: the original article does not include all possible equivalent or relevant analyses, and when results from these additional analyses are combined with the results reported in the original article, the strength of inferences is weakened. Moreover, newly-reported evidence reveals heterogeneity in racial bias: respondents given a direct choice between equivalent targets of different races favored the Black target over the White target. These results illustrate how the presence of researcher degrees of freedom can foster production of inferences that are not representative of all inferences that a set of data could produce. This study thus highlights the value of preregistering research design protocols and required public posting of data.

Of Publishable Quality: Ideas for Political Science Seminar Papers

Many political science publications advance knowledge using previously collected data and an innovation or two in theory or methods. To encourage students embarking on a seminar paper project, I review some of these publications to illustrate that the understanding of political phenomena often advances in incremental steps.

Safe, Legal, Rare … and Early: Gender and the Politics of Abortion

Abstract Much social science research suggests that men and women have similar abortion policy preferences. But this inference may be incorrect because studies have focused on understanding preferences regarding the reasons women may seek abortions, while neglecting preferences as they pertain to the timing of abortions. Analysis of responses to a team module of the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study indicated that women in the sample were more likely than men to support legal abortion for any reason, but they were also more likely than men to restrict that support to the first trimester for non‐elective abortions. This elective‐but‐early policy captured the preferences of a large number of respondents, suggesting that politicians and researchers should account for the timing dimension of the abortion issue.