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Downey explicates problems in his response to comments made by William M. Bowen & Kingsley E. Haynes (all, 2000) to Downey's article, "Environmental Injustice: Is Race or Income a Better Predictor?" (1998), necessitated by the fact that Bowen & Kingsley's comments were edited after Downey wrote his response. Adapted from the source document.

Empirically tests hypotheses that (1) increased poll complexity & difficulty (decreased readability) will increase the % of respondents (Rs) selecting "don't know" responses, & (2) increased sentence complexity will increase the % of Rs offering midrange responses. Analysis of published opinion poll data from US Rs confirms Hypothesis 1, though support declines with a greater number of answer options (4-5 vs 2-option responses). However, English-speaking Canadian & British Rs actually experienced a decrease in "don't know" responses as questions decreased in readability. For all Rs, sentence complexity increased strong responses & decreased midrange ones, contrary to Hypothesis 2. 1 Table, 15 References. K. Hyatt Stewart

A review essay on books by (1) Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U Press, 1997); (2) Peter Katzenstein (Ed), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia U Press, 1996); (3) David Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U Press, 1998); & (4) Kathleen McNamara, The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U Press, 1998). After years of neglect, ideational variables have moved to the forefront of the political science agenda, yet ideational explanations still meet with skepticism in many quarters. Studies of ideas should focus on the three broad questions of agency & change, institutionalization, & political behavior. First, how do new ideas rise to political prominence, & why do individuals or groups trade old beliefs for new ones? Second, how do some ideas become embedded in organizations, patterns of discourse, & collective identities, & take on a life of their own separate from the conditions that gave rise to them? Third, how do ideational variables influence political behavior, & what connects ideational variables to particular political outcomes? Adapted from the source document.

In an introduction to the book's first section, "(Un)disciplined Identities," the director of the Northwest Center for Research on Women offers a personal account of her dual academic research on violence & science using methodological approaches mostly from the social sciences. Two specific projects are described to illustrate the general character of her research efforts. One project focuses on the oral histories of women scientists & the other on the science experiences of girls in a small rural school. The difficulties & benefits of having multiple allegiances are discussed, along with the need for more transdisciplinarity that includes the sciences, & the continuing lack of women of color in both the sciences & women's studies. It is maintained that the personal narratives included in this section forge new intellectual & institutional ground by offering images that reflect a wide range of disciplinary parameters. Such work offers hope that existing disciplines will one day welcome transformative scholarship & will work to create new areas of study in "naturecultures.". 30 References. J. Lindroth

Demographic surveys frequently seek information from multiple household members. Such surveys have two main design options: a person-level approach, which presents all questions to each eligible person, & a household screening approach, which first identifies whether anyone in the household has the characteristic of interest. Person-by-person enumeration can be inefficient & tedious, but may reduce underreporting error. The household-level approach is efficient, but suspect with regard to data quality. Published research offers scant empirical evidence concerning the impacts of these two designs. This paper presents results from the US Census Bureau's 1999 Questionnaire Design Experimental Research Survey, which included a split-ballot test of the two designs. We find some evidence, for some topics, that household screening increases the risk of underreporting, but we also find evidence that it produces more reliable data. We find the expected increase in interview efficiency with the household-level design, & some evidence that interviewers prefer it. 1 Table, 9 References. Adapted from the source document.

In claiming that there are realities that are "uncontainable" to our minds, this paper argues that the ability to question arises not out of doubt, but from an expression of what Socrates referred to as "intellectual eros." This ability to question & to "examine things" has resulted in the development of philosophy. Unfortunately, this ability has been severely restricted by the ideology of modern political philosophy, a theory that hampers our ability to see outside ourselves. This inability to understand anything that is not of ourselves has caused mankind to be concerned only with "human things" & the "fate of nations." Plato himself condemned this attitude stating that compared with "divine seriousness," the things of man "are diversions." Political philosophy should not be thought of as merely the thinking about political things. It is the means through which those principles that are greater than the nation, & man himself, can be understood. K. A. Larsen

Critics of public opinion polls often claim that methodological shortcuts taken to collect timely data produce biased results. This study compares two random digit dial national telephone surveys that used identical questionnaires but very different levels of effort: a "Standard" survey conducted over a 5-day period that used a sample of adults who were home when the interviewer called, & a "Rigorous" survey conducted over an 8-week period that used random selection from among all adult household members. Response rates, computed according to AAPOR guidelines, were 60.6% for the Rigorous & 36.0% for the Standard study. Nonetheless, the two surveys produced similar results. Across 91 comparisons, no difference exceeded 9 percentage points, & the average difference was about 2 percentage points. Most of the statistically significant differences were among demographic items. Very few significant differences were found on attention to media & engagement in politics, social trust & connectedness, & most social & political attitudes, including even those toward surveys. 5 Tables, 15 References. Adapted from the source document.

When survey researchers are interested in measuring the personal values of respondents, they often use a rating rather than a ranking method because it is easier & faster to administer & yields data that are amenable to parametric statistical analyses. However, because personal values are inherently positive constructs, respondents often exhibit little differentiation among the values & end-pile their ratings toward the positive end of the scale. Such lack of differentiation may potentially affect the statistical properties of the values & the ability to detect relationships with other variables. Two experiments were conducted via mail surveys to general population samples to test alternative rating methods designed to increase differentiation & reduce end-piling in the rating of personal values. The results suggest that a procedure in which respondents first pick their most & least important values, then rate them (most-least), provides more differentiation & less end-piling than a simple rating procedure (rate-only). Increased differentiation for the most-least method influenced the fit of latent structure & resulted in more robust relations between the values ratings & other criterion variables. These results generalized across type of values scale, number of values rated, & number of rating points. 3 Tables, 42 References. Adapted from the source document.