Research Methods Presentation

Research Methods

Andrew Taylor

What is the effect of educational achievement on the level of political conviction in the American voting public?


▪ What is “political conviction?”



▪ How do you measure it?



▪ How do you measure it?

▪ What does education have to do with it?

What is “political conviction?”


▪ Political conviction is the circumstances in which an individual will choose to act or refuse to act based on their personal ideology.


▪ What causes someone to take time out of their day to march in a rally?

▪ What prompts one to decrease their personal wealth in any capacity to aid in a common political cause?

▪ What compels you to write a letter to the editor in strong support or dissent of an issue?

Conviction!

Great!

...but how does one measure that?

Previous works.

▪ Converse (1964)

▪ Studied the cognitive abilities of the educated mind and found that those with a higher degree of education were much more effective at complex inferential understanding.

Previous works.

▪ Bobo & Licari (1989)

▪ They demonstrated that as verbal aptitude increased, subjects were more likely to comprehend the social stratification and universal application of civil rights.

Previous works.

▪ Emler & Frazer (1999)

▪ They found that students of math or physical science were statistically just as likely to be engaged with social action as students of social sciences.

Previous works.

▪ Galston (2001)

▪ Concluded that basic classroom instruction on civil institution is insufficient to compel individuals to participate. Open debate, discussion and even civil conflict coupled with service learning initiatives produce a greater degree of participation.

Previous works.

▪ Berinsky, Lenz (2010)

▪ They concluded that education can likely lead to greater political participation but it is the broader experience that motivates and that experience can be achieved through many forms of personal growth and self-discovery.

Dependent Variables / ANES Time 2012

▪Time▪Money▪Voice

Time.▪ Has R in past 4 years: attended city/school board? (DHSINVOLV_EVERMTG)

▪ Has R in past 4 years: joined a protest march? (DHSINVOLV_RALLY)

▪ Does R go to any political meetings, rallies, speeches? (MOBILPO_MARCH)

▪ Does R do any (other) work for party or candidate? (MOBILPO_OTHERWORK)

Money.▪ Did R contribute money to specific candidate campaign? (MOBILPO_CTBCAND)

▪ Did R contribute money to political party? (MOBILPO_CTBPTY)

▪ Did R contribute to any other group for/against a candidate? (MOBILPO_CTBOTH)

▪ Has R in past 4 years: given money to a soc/pol organization? (DHSINVOLV_EVERGIVSOC)

Voice.▪ Has R in past 4 yrs: called radio/TV about a political issue? (DHSINVOLV_EVERTVCALL)

▪ Has R in past 4 yrs : written a letter to newspaper/mag about political issue? (DHSINVOLV_EVERLETT)

▪ Has R in past 4 yrs : sent a message on Facebook/Twitter about political issue? (DHSINVOLV_EVERTWIT)

▪ Has R worn a campaign button or post sign or bumper sticker? (MOBILPO_RBUTTN)

Recoding▪ All 12 sub-variables were recoded into nominal YES or NO responses. All other data was removed as SYSTEM MISSING. (Yes =1 / No = 0)

▪ They were then grouped and computed into my final composite dependent variables.

▪ TotalTime

▪ TotalMoney

▪ TotalVoice

Recoding▪ My final dependent variables are interval level data coded as 0 to 4

▪ 0 = No participation

▪ 4 = Participation in all

▪ My dependent variable baselines are as follows…

TotalTimeTime

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative

Percent

Valid

.00 4078 69.0 74.1 74.1

1.00 1016 17.2 18.5 92.6

2.00 279 4.7 5.1 97.6

3.00 84 1.4 1.5 99.2

4.00 46 .8 .8 100.0

Total 5503 93.1 100.0

Missing System 411 6.9

Total 5914 100.0

TotalMoneyMoney


Percent

Valid

.00 3755 63.5 68.3 68.3

1.00 1066 18.0 19.4 87.7

2.00 366 6.2 6.7 94.4

3.00 217 3.7 3.9 98.3

4.00 91 1.5 1.7 100.0

Total 5495 92.9 100.0


Total 5914 100.0

TotalVoiceVoice


Percent

Valid

.00 3649 61.7 66.4 66.4

1.00 1367 23.1 24.9 91.2

2.00 385 6.5 7.0 98.2

3.00 75 1.3 1.4 99.6

4.00 22 .4 .4 100.0

Total 5498 93.0 100.0


Total 5914 100.0

Independent Variable/ ANES Time 2012

▪ Comparatively my independent variable is fairly straight forward.

▪ What is the highest level of school you have completed or the highest degree you have received? (DEM_EDUCR)

▪ This was recoded to exclude all non-relevant codes outside of responses 1 through 16.

▪ These are interval level responses covering the spectrum of American educational achievement.

▪ (1 = Less than first grade and 16 = Doctorate degree.)

Independent Variable/ ANES Time 2012

Data Difficulties.▪ As you can see…

…there is a great deal of negative skew in the composite variables. The majority of respondents participated in none of the 12 core activities.

Further issues.

• Bi-modal responses in the independent variable

• Finally, this data set fails to provide for frequency of participation. There is no way to know how often those that choose to act, do so.

Results.As you can see following a means test for the average level of participation in multiple forms of political expression, there is a statistical upward trend in all three composite dependent variable as the educational achievement increases.

Results.However, given the fact that so few individuals within all educational intervals choose to participate at all, I was compelled to calculate the correlation coefficient of each variable with the following results:

Results.

Education Level Money

Education Level

Pearson Correlation 1 .229**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000

N 5846 5436

Money

Pearson Correlation .229** 1


N 5436 5495

Education Level Time

Education Level



N 5846 5444

Time



N 5444 5503

Education Level Voice

Education Level



N 5846 5440

Voice



N 5440 5498

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Discussion.As you can see, results do show a positive trend for each composite variable, however, they are of limited significance with the donation of money having the highest degree of correlation at r = .229

Education Level Money

Education Level



N 5846 5436

Money



N 5436 5495

Moving forward…

While a strong relation to political conviction through participation and education was not established by this study I believe that the composite variables of:

TotalTime

TotalMoney

TotalVoice

…are a valid measures of political conviction and that education is one thread that ties them together.

The next step is to find those other common threads…

Gender?

Class?

Partisanship?

Questions?

Research Methods Presentation

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