Search results

This article compares estimates of "informed" public opinion derived from the regression-based approach of Bartels, Delli Carpini and Keeter, and Althaus with those from the deliberative polling method of Fishkin on the same sample of respondents. Contrary to low-information rationality perspectives, both methods indicate that across a range of prominent policy domains, level of political awareness has a strong impact on the expressed preferences of individuals. And while self-canceling across respondents tends to translate these individual-level influences into only rather modest effects in the aggregate, on a significant minority of issues, substantial shifts in collective opinion remain. The broad similarity of the estimates produced by these two very different methods, in addition to their convergence with previous studies of information effects, lends some simultaneous support to the validity and reliability of both approaches.

Studies using data from the British Election Study and the British Social Attitudes survey have concluded that the case for a significant rise in turnout amongst young people at the 2017 general election remains unproven. A limitation of these data sets for assessing the so-called Youthquake thesis is the small number of younger voters they contain. In this research note we use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey to produce more robust estimates of turnout amongst people aged under thirty between the 2010, 2015, and 2017 general elections. Our findings support the claim that turnout increased markedly among voters in this age group in 2017. They also demonstrate that the increase in youth turnout was not specific to 2017 but, rather, represented a continuation of a change between 2010 and 2015. Our analysis confirms the heightened importance of age as a predictor of vote choice in 2017, with younger voters significantly more likely to vote Labour compared to 2010 and 2015.

It has long been suspected that, when asked to provide opinions on matters of public policy, significant numbers of those surveyed do so with only the vaguest understanding of the issues in question. In this article, we present the results of a study which demonstrates that a significant minority of the British public are, in fact, willing to provide evaluations of non-existent policy issues. In contrast to previous American research, which has found such responses to be most prevalent among the less educated, we find that the tendency to provide 'pseudo-opinions' is positively correlated with self-reported interest in politics. This effect is itself moderated by the context in which the political interest item is administered; when this question precedes the fictitious issue item, its effect is greater than when this order is reversed. Political knowledge, on the other hand, is associated with a lower probability of providing pseudo-opinions, though this effect is weaker than that observed for political interest. Our results support the view that responses to fictitious issue items are not generated at random, via some 'mental coin flip' . Instead, respondents actively seek out what they consider to be the likely meaning of the question and then respond in their own terms, through the filter of partisan loyalties and current political discourses.

Abstract
In this paper, we consider the role of personality as a component of motivation in promoting or inhibiting the tendency to exhibit the satisficing response styles of midpoint, straightlining, and Don't Know responding. We assess whether respondents who are low on the Conscientiousness and Agreeableness dimensions of the Big Five Personality Inventory are more likely to exhibit these satisficing response styles. We find large effects of these personality dimensions on the propensity to satisfice in both face-to-face and self-administration modes and in probability and nonprobability samples. People who score high on Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were less likely to be in the top decile of straightlining and midpoint distributions. The findings for Don't Know responding were weaker and only significant for Conscientiousness in the nonprobability sample. We also find large effects across all satisficing indicators for a direct measure of cognitive ability, where existing studies have mostly relied on proxy measures of ability such as educational attainment. Sensitivity analysis suggests the personality effects are likely to be causal in nature.

For a long time, criminologists have contended that neighborhoods are important determinants of how individuals perceive their risk of criminal victimization. Yet, despite the theoretical importance and policy relevance of these claims, the empirical evidence base is surprisingly thin and inconsistent. Drawing on data from a national probability sample of individuals, linked to independent measures of neighborhood demographic characteristics, visual signs of physical disorder, and reported crime, we test four hypotheses about the mechanisms through which neighborhoods influence fear of crime. Our large sample size, analytical approach, and the independence of our empirical measures enable us to overcome some of the limitations that have hampered much previous research into this question. We find that neighborhood structural characteristics, visual signs of disorder, and recorded crime all have direct and independent effects on individual‐level fear of crime. Additionally, we demonstrate that individual differences in fear of crime are strongly moderated by neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics; between‐group differences in expressed fear of crime are both exacerbated and ameliorated by the characteristics of the areas in which people live.

Recent studies of social mobility have documented that not only who your parents are, but also where you grow up, substantially influences subsequent life chances. We bring these two concepts together to study social mobility in England and Wales, in three post-war generations, using linked Decennial Census data. Our findings show considerable spatial variation in rates of absolute and relative mobility, as well as how these have changed over time. While upward mobility increased in every region between the mid-1950s and the early 1980s, this shift varied across different regions and tailed off for more recent cohorts. We also explore how domestic migration is related to social mobility, finding that those who moved out of their region of origin had higher rates of upward mobility compared to those who stayed, although this difference narrowed over time.

In this study we analyse the effect of participation in an online asynchronous discussion forum on the direction and magnitude of opinion change and policy preferences relating to youth antisocial behaviour among a large sample of online panel members. Panel members were randomly assigned to conditions that manipulated: (1) the amount of information about youth antisocial behaviour provided; and (2) the extent to which panel members were able to communicate with one another. We find that engagement in online discussion forums can lead to modest shifts in preferences among those who choose to contribute to the discussion. However, because those who choose to engage in this way are a small and self-selecting minority who make little use of background information, questions remain about the utility of online discussion forums as effective means of engaging citizens to generate informed inputs into the policy process. Adapted from the source document.

In this study we analyse the effect of participation in an online asynchronous discussion forum on the direction and magnitude of opinion change and policy preferences relating to youth antisocial behaviour among a large sample of online panel members. Panel members were randomly assigned to conditions that manipulated: (1) the amount of information about youth antisocial behaviour provided; and (2) the extent to which panel members were able to communicate with one another. We find that engagement in online discussion forums can lead to modest shifts in preferences among those who choose to contribute to the discussion. However, because those who choose to engage in this way are a small and self-selecting minority who make little use of background information, questions remain about the utility of online discussion forums as effective means of engaging citizens to generate informed inputs into the policy process.

A persistent problem in the design of bipolar attitude questions is whether or not to include a middle response alternative. On the one hand, it is reasonable to assume that people might hold opinions which are `neutral' with regard to issues of public controversy. On the other, question designers suspect that offering a mid-point may attract respondents with no opinion, or those who lean to one side of an issue but do not wish to incur the cognitive costs required to determine a directional response. Existing research into the effects of offering a middle response alternative has predominantly used a split-ballot design, in which respondents are assigned to conditions which offer or omit a midpoint. While this body of work has been useful in demonstrating that offering or excluding a mid-point substantially influences the answers respondents provide, it does not offer any clear resolution to the question of which format yields more accurate data. In this paper, we use a different approach. We use follow-up probes administered to respondents who initially select the mid-point to determine whether they selected this alternative in order to indicate opinion neutrality, or to indicate that they do not have an opinion on the issue. We find the vast majority of responses turn out to be what we term `face-saving don't knows' and that reallocating these responses from the mid-point to the don't know category significantly alters descriptive and multivariate inferences. Counter to the survey-satisficing perspective, we find that those with this tendency is greatest amongst those who express more interest in the topic area.

We present the results of a survey experiment in which we manipulate the order that respondents are administered vote choice and economic evaluation items. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence which suggests that survey respondents tacitly align evaluations of the national economy with previously stated attitudes and behaviour. Our results have implications for theories of economic voting and for the design of national election study questionnaires.