Philip H. Pollock

Organizations as Agents of Mobilization: How Does Group Activity Affect Political Participation?

Although organizational involvement has been widely studied as an independent predictor of political participation, there is some question about the process whereby groups mobilize their members. One model is that organizational activity and social class relate to participation in similar ways-through the development of political attitudes and skills. An alternative model is that group members are mobilized without developing participatory orientations. Evidence presented here suggests that organizations vary systematically by type (1) in the level and mode of participation engaged in by their members and (2) in the relative importance of political orientations to these relationships.

Does Active Learning Enhance Learner Outcomes? Evidence from Discussion Participation in Online Classes

Discussion is one form of active learning, which has been linked to better learner outcomes. Little is known about the relationship between active learning through discussion and learner outcome in the online environment. Here, we construct an index of active learning online that includes the number of postings a student has read, the number of direct responses a student has posted, and how many meaningful “in-depth” statements a student has made. We link this index to course grade as a proxy for learner outcome and find that active learners perform better, on average, than the less active students. We also analyze the component indicators of the index and find that the number of postings read is most closely related to course grade. This is particularly true for those students who came into the class with a lower GPA. We conclude that online courses can stimulate active learning through discussion. Furthermore, we point to the importance of measurement of active learning in any assessment effort and argue that the individual components of active learning behavior through discussions might have a differential effect on learner outcomes.

Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections: The Role of Political Action Committees

The spectacular growth in the number and spending of political action committees has made this new breed of political organization an increasingly important actor in congressional elections. Indeed, the strategic use of PAC resources is an important element in the developing theory of how rational political expectations affect congressional elections. The evidence about PACs adduced in support of this theory has thus far emphasized changes in aggregate spending. Using a merged data set of Federal Election Commission records from both the 1980 and 1982 elections, the authors are able for the first time to trace the tactical shifts of individual PACs between years. The analysis provides strong support for the theory of political expectations. Predictable strategic behavior is found for PACs with different contributor motivations. The different motives, furthermore, appear to be quite durable, despite generally convergent behavior by many PACs in 1982. Yet the data also suggest that intraorganizational considerations constrain the strategic choice for some PACs, especially labor committees. Thus, the analysis reveals large disparities in the malleability of pro-Republican and pro-Democratic resources.

Assessing Student Perceptions of the Benefits of Discussions in Small-Group, Large-Class, and Online Learning Contexts

A large literature establishes the benefits of discussions for stimulating student engagement and critical thinking skills. However, we know considerably less about the differential effects of various discussion environments on student learning. In this study, we assess student perceptions concerning the benefits of discussions in an upper-level political science class. We compare how students evaluated discussions in the whole-class environment, in small face-to-face discussion groups, and in online discussion groups. Overall, according to student surveys, small discussion groups elicited the highest student satisfaction and scored highest in critical thinking skills, while online discussions provided the best forum to express thoughts. While they did not favor all-class discussions, students reported that this format, too, provided benefits.

Learning from “Listening” to Peers in Online Political Science Classes

Studies of classroom behavior and learning outcomes have demonstrated that student discussion leads to better learner outcomes. Do these effects, which are based on studies of face-to-face interaction, transfer to the virtual classroom? Existing studies of online postings in asynchronous discussion forums have primarily studied the effects on the authors of the postings. The effect on the recipients—the students reading the postings—has been largely neglected. We set out to fill this gap in our understanding of online discussions by analyzing the effect of reading behavior on course performance. We first perform an in-depth analysis of student discussion behavior in two online courses. We consider the quantity and quality of student postings, as well as the number of postings read by each student. We then test our main findings using a larger dataset of 279 students from eight additional classes, controlling for student grade point average, major, class standing, race, gender, and instructor. Overall, our results suggest that reading is significantly and independently related to course performance. We conclude that discussions have an important place in online classes.

Factors contributing to NIMBY attitudes

Abstract Most discussions about public resistance to hazardous waste facility siting assume that opponents to the projects—those evincing “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) attitudes—have strong environmental values, insufficient or inaccurate knoeledge, and can be assuaged by managerial input or economic benefits. Yet our findings suggest that a persons orientation towards the environment is not a significant factor in opposing these facilities, and that knowledge generally works to polarize differences rather than collapse them. Prescriptions for dilemma revolve around three strategies: education, economic incentives, and inclusion in management. Yet these prescriptions generally do not work as expected, and siting is delayed or scrapped. We propose that the foregoing assumptions are in some ways inaccurate or wrong, and that NIMBY attitudes have a stronger basis in core cultural values than more immediate instrumental considerations. The case of nuclear power is used as an analogy, since research has shown clearly that presentation of the issue as one of deficient public accountability by capitalist institutions has proved more effective than alternative explanations evoking environmental quality or economic efficiency. Technical issues, such as those involving nuclear power and hazardous waste, require intermediaries for most people to understand and interpret the issues and relate them to their core values. But while there are many continuities between the two issues, we find that there are still opportunities for public attitudes toward hazardous waste to develop differently.

The Modes of Participation Revisited, 1980-2004

In a series of publications, Verba and Nie and their coauthors argued that participatory acts vary along a number of dimensions, and that acts having similar dimensional profiles would constitute distinct modes of participation (Verba and Nie 1972; Verba, Nie, and Kim 1971, 1978; Verba, et al., 1973). In the realm of electoral participation, these investigators postulated two modes, voting and campaigning. Campaigning was thought to encompass a variety of behaviors, including working for a candidate or party, trying to persuade someone how to vote, and making a campaign contribution. A new dimensional typology, presented here, predicts that working in a campaign and contributing to political actors constitute separate modes of participation. We confirm these predictions by performing confirmatory factor analyses of participation items from the 1980-2004 American National Election Studies. We also find that vote persuasion is best modeled as a measure of political discussion.

Politics and Markets: Corporate Money in American National Elections

The current American debate about the relationship between business and government represents the most significant reopening of that issue since the New Deal. The debate is in part about governments role in the economy, but the issue of businesss role in politics is being joined as well, joined in fact on several fronts. There are, of course, the polemics of corporations and their critics, in which business is cast alternately as victim and villain. The issue also divides more serious students of American politics and has fostered a wealth of theorizing about the role of the state. Finally, the issue of business influence pervades discussions about campaign finance.

Partial Online Instruction and Gender-based Differences in Learning: A Quasi-Experimental Study of American Government

College teachers are increasingly using instructional technology to supplement or substitute for face-to-face instruction. The incentives and arguments for doing so are many, including facilitation of higher education for non-traditional students and changing student demographics, skill building to improve student preparation for workplaces that are likely to use computer technology, space restrictions in universities with growing enrollment, the opportunities that Internet classrooms provide for organizing and monitoring student work and assignments, and so on. However, little is known about how online instruction affects the learner. Online instruction is, in many ways, fundamentally different from face-to-face instruction (see, for example, Lee 2003 ; McCormack and Jones 1998 ; Palloff and Pratt 1999 ). For instance, instructors are unlikely to simply post their lecture notes online in the hope that the students will read, take notes, memorize, and retain the information, which would be the closest equivalent to a traditional lecture classroom. Consequently, it cannot be assumed that different instructional modes (such as lectures or online instruction) necessarily have the same learner outcomes. This lack of knowledge concerning the effects of online instruction on learner outcomes also extends to the question of gender equality. Authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order. We gratefully acknowledge financial support for both the redesign and the evaluation of the course from the Pew Learning and Technology Program, Center for Academic Transformation, Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign.

Who SoTLs Where? Publishing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Political Science

ABSTRACT Political science, as a discipline, is a relative newcomer to the Scholarship ofTeaching and Learning (SoTL).We examine authorship patterns of SoTL articles in PS:PoliticalSciencePGlassick,Huber,andMaeroff1997).TheScholarshipofTeachingandLearningisnotconfinedtotheU.S.;infact,SoTLisgainingrelevanceinternationally.Forexample,intheUK,theResearchAssessmentExercise(anassessmentofuni-versities’researchactivitiesthatisacrucialcomponentforuni-versityrankingandfunding)statesthatforthe2008assessmentround,“highereducationpedagogicresearchwillbejudgedbythestandardsappliedtoallformsofresearchoutput”while“teach-ingmaterialsandsubject-relatedpedagogy...willbetreatedinthesamewayastextbooks”(RAE2008).Thus,insomecountriesSoTLworkisofficiallygainingequalstatustothatofothersub-stantivedisciplinaryresearch.AsignificantshareofSoTLstudiesispublishedinjournalsinthefieldofeducation.