Suchergebnisse

In March, 1952 the Carnegie Corporation made available to the Social Science Research Council a research grant to support a major study of factors influencing the popular vote in the 1952 presidential election. Under the sponsorship of the Council's Committee on Political Behavior this project is currently being carried out by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan.The study was developed around six major objectives:1. To identify the voters and non-voters, Republicans and Democrats, within four major geographical areas, in regard toa. socio-economic characteristics;b. attitudes and opinions on political issues;c. perceptions of the parties and the candidates.2. To compare these groups to the corresponding groups in the 1948 presidential election.3. To trace the resolution of the vote with particular attention to the undecided and changing voters.4. To study the impact of the activities of the major parties on the population.5. To analyze the nature and correlates of political party identification.6. To analyze the nature and correlates of political participation.

In the current context of legal challenges to affirmative action and race-based considerations in college admissions, educators have been challenged to articulate clearly the educational purposes and benefits of diversity. In this article, Patricia Gurin, Eric Dey, Sylvia Hurtado, and Gerald Gurin explore the relationship between students' experiences with diverse peers in the college or university setting and their educational outcomes. Rooted in theories of cognitive development and social psychology, the authors present a framework for understanding how diversity introduces the relational discontinuities critical to identity construction and its subsequent role in fostering cognitive growth. Using both single- and multi-institutional data from the University of Michigan and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, the authors go on to examine the effects of classroom diversity and informal interaction among African American, Asian American, Latino/a, and White students on learning and democracy outcomes. The results of their analyses underscore the educational and civic importance of informal interaction among different racial and ethnic groups during the college years. The authors offer their findings as evidence of the continuing importance of affirmative action and diversity efforts by colleges and universities, not only as a means of increasing access to higher education for greater numbers of students, but also as a means of fostering students' academic and social growth.

Policies directed at alleviating poverty rest on a set of assumptions regarding the demographic composition of the poor & the psychological dispositions of poor individuals. Evidence from a representative sample of 5,165 low-income individuals who participated in the 1969-1978 Panel Study of Income Dynamics shows that poverty is widespread but not usually persistent, & that the characteristics of the persistently poor do not conform to the conventional wisdom. The economic status of the poor does not appear to have been caused by psychological dispositions. Intergenerational data from the same study show generally weak links between poverty or welfare status of parents & that of their children. Public policies for dealing with poverty can be properly devised without attempting to resocialize poor people & without undue concern that poverty programs will generate dependency among the majority of those they help. 1 Table. Modified HA

An exploration of the theoretical & methodological problems underlying the relationship between group consciousness & political participation, based on data from the U of Michigan Center for Political Studies' 1972 & 1976 National Election Studies. Four conceptual components of group consciousness are delineated & their relationships with electoral & nonelectoral participation among both subordinate & dominant social groups (190 businessmen, 440 poor, 1,034 whites, 192 blacks, 622 young, 521 old, & 1,284 women) examined. An interactive model fits both a theory of mobilization & the data far better than a linear, additive model. 3 Tables, 1 Appendix, 21 References. Modified HA.