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Research indicates that peer interaction in the online classroom engages students in academic reflective deliberations. This study assesses student peer interactions on a purposefully designed collaborative website in an American politics course offered across two courses. Significant evidence reveals that students are open, candid, and inquisitive of varied positions while interacting with academic reflectivity across each question asked of them. They argue their perspectives with each other, teach and add information to their deliberations while being academically reflective. This study concludes that a peer interactive design is an invaluable method to engage students in academic deliberation while providing educators, researchers, and administrators an innovative means to enhance active learning and participation online.

In this research, we seek to explain state-to-state variation in how harshly term limits treat incumbent state legislators. Harshness is measured by how quickly and how permanently state limits remove incumbents from the legislature. Overall, there is considerable support for the contention that political structure influences how harshly states treat their incumbents. Much of the variation in the harshness of term limits may reflect the idiosyncrasies of leaders or small groups in the various ad hoc organizations that have pushed for limits in the different states. However, the impact of at least one contextual variable is significant: Variation in turnover rate accounts for 33% of the variance in harshness. In comparing states that have adopted term limits, the lower the existing turnover rate in the legislature, the harsher the term limits they tend to adopt.

This research builds upon past work exploring how an online academic website can provide a learning environment in which students engage in dialogic argumentation by voicing their diverse perspectives, challenging their peers through counterarguments, and articulating their positional differences. Drawing from two semesters of data from an academic website populated by three classes, we analyze 375 peer-to-peer responses for their argumentative interactions. Using a mixed methods approach, we find statistically significant evidence that argumentative interactions lead to deeper engagement across the classes. This study concludes that online discussions—a form of computer mediated communication (CMC)—are an innovative means to advance e-learning, a concern for educators across disciplines.

AbstractThere is tremendous nonrandom variation from state to state in the rates at which people overreport voting in the Current Population Surveys (CPS). What accounts for this state-level bias in overreporting? We find that the determinants of statewide rates of overreporting parallel those in our earlier findings on individual-level overreporting: overreporting is a function of higher concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities, higher rates of religious membership, and being in the Deep South. These relationships are remarkably stable over time (1980-2000), and they are unaltered by improvements in how we measure overreporting. We suggest a method for deflating reported statewide registration figures to account for this bias, assuming that these registration figures are inflated in the same way as are statewide voting figures. We replicate and extend a part of Brown, Jackson, and Wright's (1999) analysis using these deflated figures, showing that our approach can improve explanation.

There is tremendous nonrandom variation from state to state in the rates at which people overreport voting in the Current Population Surveys (CPS). What accounts for this state-level bias in overreporting? We find that the determinants of statewide rates of overreporting parallel those in our earlier findings on individual-level overreporting: overreporting is a function of higher concentrations of racial & ethnic minorities, higher rates of religious membership, & being in the Deep South. These relationships are remarkably stable over time (1980-2000), & they are unaltered by improvements in how we measure overreporting. We suggest a method for deflating reported statewide registration figures to account for this bias, assuming that these registration figures are inflated in the same way as are statewide voting figures. We replicate & extend a part of Brown, Jackson, & Wright's (1999) analysis using these deflated figures, showing that our approach can improve explanation. 7 Tables, 50 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article discusses the causes of state-to-state variations in staff functions & sizes. The budgetary functions performed by dual & joint state legislative fiscal offices (LFOs), along with staff resources, functions, & size, are compared. The conclusions reached from this study agree with the Madisonian view that competition between chambers & their agencies drives dual offices to expand the scope of their functions & the resources they are allocated. Each dual office strives to perform functions & control resources that are not only as expansive as those of the executive but also as expansive as those of the other chamber. 2 Tables, 24 References. R. Whyte

The key to understanding why people overreport is that those who are under the most pressure to vote are the ones most likely to misrepresent their behavior when they fail to do so. Among all nonvoters, the most likely to overreport are the more educated, partisan, & religious, & those who have been contacted & asked to vote for a candidate. The greater the concentration of African American & Latino nonvoters in a district, the greater the probability of overreporting in those districts, both among those in the relevant minority group & among white Anglos. White nonvoters are more likely to overreport in the Deep South than elsewhere. Overreporting matters: using reported votes in place of validated votes substantially distorts standard multivariate explanations of voting, increasing the apparent importance of independent variables that are related in the same direction to both overreporting & voting & sharply decreasing the apparent importance of independent variables related in opposing directions to those two variables. 5 Tables, 54 References. Adapted from the source document.

The seventh annual Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from February 5 to 7, 2010, with 224 attendees onsite. The theme for the meeting was "Advancing Excellence in Teaching Political Science." Using the working-group model, the TLC track format encourages in-depth discussion and debate on research dealing with the scholarship of teaching and learning.