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Americans' trust in other Americans has been on the decline for decades. Their trust in American institutions such as business and religion is, although sometimes wavering, more resilient. Can our trust in institutions help repair our trust in each other?

Although definitions of democracy commonly include all adults, measures of democracy often fail to include women. In this article, I demonstrate that this incorrect operationalization can affect (1) measurement of transition dates to democracy, (2) description of the emergence of democracy, & (3) understanding of the causes of democratization. I begin by outlining the disjuncture between the definition of democracy & its measurement in a number of studies (eg, Muller, 1988; Huntington, 1991; & Rueschemeyer, Stephens, & Stephens, 1992). I then illustrate the consequences of omission in these studies & finish with the suggestion that a possible solution lies in graded measures of democracy. 1 Table, 2 Figures, 1 Appendix, 51 References. Adapted from the source document.

Service and advocacy organizations have long struggled to find the appropriate language to name traumatic experiences when working with vulnerable populations. Organizations have been pressed to adopt either "victim"-based language or "survivor"-based language, with both terms seen as having mutually exclusive meanings. However, despite academic and popular debates, no recent studies have documented trends in language used to describe traumatic experiences, whether of sexual and relationship violence, or of experiences of war, disaster, or major illness. In this research note, we use administrative data from the Internal Revenue Service to analyze how 3,756 service and advocacy organizations use trauma-related language between 1998 and 2016. Descriptive analysis shows that survivor language has been on the rise as victim language declined. Victim remains a common way to name trauma, however, and survivor tends to join, rather than displace, victim terminology. Further analysis also points to gendered use of both terms. Victim and survivor are used together most often in organizations that work with trauma experienced by women and in the field of sexual and relationship violence. We suggest these findings indicate a more complex story of how communities of language users emerge, which aligns with recent sociological treatments of discourse.

Questions on voluntary association memberships have been used extensively in social scientific research for decades. Researchers generally assume that these respondent self-reports are accurate, but their measurement has never been assessed. Respondent characteristics are known to influence the accuracy of other self-report variables such as self-reported health, voting, or test scores. In this article, we investigate whether measurement error occurs in self-reports of voluntary association memberships. We use the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS) questions on voluntary associations, which include a novel resource: the actual organization names listed by respondents. We find that this widely used voluntary association classification scheme contains significant amounts of measurement error overall, especially within certain categories. Using a multilevel logistic regression, we predict accuracy of response nested within respondents and interviewers. We find that certain respondent characteristics, including some used in research on voluntary associations, influence respondent accuracy. Inaccurate and/or incorrect measurement will affect the statistics and conclusions drawn from the data on voluntary associations.

The determinants of public opinion on foreign aid in donor countries have received little attention. This paper examines support for foreign aid with a large, multi-level, cross-national study. Hypotheses are tested with multi-level models, including both individual-level and country-level variables, to predict positive attitudes. Two datasets are used to measure attitudes in donor countries: (1) the 1995 World Values Survey, which has information from approximately 6,000 individuals in nine countries and asks a rich battery of questions at the individual level; (2) the 2002 Gallup Voice of the People survey, asks fewer questions of individuals but contains 17 donor countries. Using both surveys combines their distinct strengths and allows tests of individual- and national-level theories across disparate samples. Results generally support the predictions that attitudes toward aid are influenced by religiosity, beliefs about the causes of poverty, awareness of international affairs, and trust in people and institutions. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright, the International Political Science Association.]

The determinants of public opinion on foreign aid in donor countries have received little attention. This paper examines support for foreign aid with a large, multi-level, cross-national study. Hypotheses are tested with multi-level models, including both individual-level and country-level variables, to predict positive attitudes. Two datasets are used to measure attitudes in donor countries: (1) the 1995 World Values Survey, which has information from approximately 6,000 individuals in nine countries and asks a rich battery of questions at the individual level; (2) the 2002 Gallup Voice of the People survey, asks fewer questions of individuals but contains 17 donor countries. Using both surveys combines their distinct strengths and allows tests of individual- and national-level theories across disparate samples. Results generally support the predictions that attitudes toward aid are influenced by religiosity, beliefs about the causes of poverty, awareness of international affairs, and trust in people and institutions.