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An underlying assumption of proportional hazards models is that the effect of a change in a covariate on the hazard rate of event occurrence is constant over time. For scholars using the Cox model, a Schoenfeld residual‐based test has become the disciplinary standard for detecting violations of this assumption. However, using this test requires researchers to make a choice about a transformation of the time scale. In practice, this choice has largely consisted of arbitrary decisions made without justification. Using replications and simulations, we demonstrate that the decision about time transformations can have profound implications for the conclusions reached. In particular, we show that researchers can make far more informed decisions by paying closer attention to the presence of outlier survival times and levels of censoring in their data. We suggest a new standard for best practices in Cox diagnostics that buttresses the current standard with in‐depth exploratory data analysis.

The decision-theoretic Downsian model and other related accounts predict that increasing perceptions of election closeness will increase turnout. Does this prediction hold? Past observational and experimental tests raise generalizability and credible inference issues. Prior field experiments either (1) compare messages emphasizing election closeness to non-closeness messages, potentially conflating changes in closeness perceptions with framing effects of the voter encouragement message, or (2) deliver information about a particular race's closeness, potentially altering beliefs about the features of that election apart from its closeness. We address the limitations of prior work in a large-scale field experiment conducted in seven states and find that a telephone message describing a class of contests as decided by fewer, as opposed to more, votes increases voter turnout. Furthermore, this effect exceeds that of a standard election reminder. The results imply expected electoral closeness affects turnout and that perceptions of closeness can be altered to increase participation.

AbstractPolitical campaigns frequently emphasize the material stakes at play in election outcomes to motivate participation. However, field-experimental academic work has given greater attention to other aspects of voters' decisions to participate despite theoretical models of turnout and substantial observational work signaling that a contest's perceived importance affects the propensity to vote. We identify two classes of treatments that may increase the material incentive to participate and test these messages in a large-scale placebo-controlled field experiment in which approximately 24,500 treatment letters were delivered during Connecticut's 2013 municipal elections. We find some evidence that these messages are effective in increasing participation, as well as that some of them may be more effective than typical nonpartisan get-out-the-vote appeals. While these results remain somewhat preliminary, our findings have important implications for our understanding of how voters decide whether to participate and how best to mobilize citizens who would otherwise sit out elections.

Research on how economic factors affect attitudes toward immigration often focuses on labor market effects, concluding that, because workers' skill levels do not predict opposition to low- versus highly skilled immigration, economic self-interest does not shape policy attitudes. We conduct a new survey to measure beliefs about a range of economic, political, and cultural consequences of immigration. When economic self-interest is broadened to include concerns about the fiscal burdens created by immigration, beliefs about these economic effects strongly correlate with immigration attitudes and explain a significant share of the difference in support for highly versus low-skilled immigration. Although cultural factors are important, our results suggest that previous work underestimates the importance of economic self-interest as a source of immigration policy preferences and attitudes more generally.

An important development in social psychology is the discovery of minor interventions that have large behavioral effects. A leading example is a recent PNAS paper showing that a modest intervention inspired by psychological theory—wording survey items to encourage subjects to think of themselves as voters (noun treatment) rather than as voting (verb treatment)—has a large positive effect on political participation (voter turnout). We replicate and extend these experiments. In a large-scale field experiment, we find that encouraging subjects to think of themselves as voters rather than as voting has no effect on turnout and we estimate that both are less effective than a standard get out the vote mobilization message.

Recent research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an institution persist among the American public. We build on this finding by providing novel field experimental evidence about how information about ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group's mailing designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent effects of such messages from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters by addressing secrecy concerns, as well as show that attempting to address these beliefs increases long-term participation.

This article presents a large-scale, empirical evaluation of the psychophysiological correlates of political ideology and, in particular, the claim that conservatives react with higher levels of electrodermal activity to threatening stimuli than liberals. We (1) conduct two large replications of this claim, using locally representative samples of Danes and Americans; (2) reanalyze all published studies and evaluate their reliability and validity; and (3) test several features to enhance the validity of psychophysiological measures and offer a number of recommendations. Overall, we find little empirical support for the claim. This is caused by significant reliability and validity problems related to measuring threat sensitivity using electrodermal activity. When assessed reliably, electrodermal activity in the replications and published studies captures individual differences in the physiological changes associated with attention shifts, which are unrelated to ideology. In contrast to psychophysiological reactions, self-reported emotional reactions to threatening stimuli are reliably associated with ideology.