1-22-09 Lecutre

Political Science 3 Laura Stoker Lecture: 1-22-09 Empirical research- gathering data Age Vote Choice Obama approval rating Obama feeling them. P1 P2 P3 P4 ?. Dou you approve or disapprove of, the job, BO in doing as prez? Storing, not strongly, follow up.. Scale 1=disagrees strongly,2= disagrees not strongly ,3,4=,5 On a 100pt scale, people cannot distinguish how they feel. But on a 7 point scale, humans were much more successful at conveying their feelings. Above quantitative database, like above, then with software you can calculate, linear models, tab form, summarize, can make a table. Two variables. What percent approve barrack, and how does that vary by age. Effect of age on the outcome Y Y- dependent - X- independent variable - - - - - -____________________ X Research questions are descriptive or causal. How does the democratization vary, what explains, what are the causal forces behind? Case: in a large end data set: People (person ex. 1-1000), Pairs (ex parent pair 1-900): Case = ex. Parent v. Child Party Identification (PID) What increases parent child transmission? When is it successful and when is it a failure? 3 hypothesis that about circumstances in which transmission is more successful. These are derived from the social learning theory. The social learning theory is (part of it is) that people form their political views from observation to those people around them such that as exposure increases, they are more likely to adopt, and the more affection they have for them the more similar their beliefs are from. Children have strong bonds with their parents, and bond of affection factor proves this. Frequency of political discussion (FPD) Radical difference in transmission success depending on the frequency of political discussion. One of the reasons you find low transmission is that they are not exposed to political communications. Consistency of communications: People are more likely to learn something if they hear it over and over again. Stable political views among parents make about 100%, when the parents flip-flop, then the carry over decreases dramatically. Turns out that many Americans are not stable in their beliefs. Another factor is whether or not the parents agree on political views. Social learning theory: exposed to a lot, and most affection for. Kids are more likely to conform to mother because they are generally closer. Genetic transmission theory: weather or not you are similar to your parent depends on how much DNA you share. Time series data: has to do with time(ex. Prez over time) vs. cross-sectional data : no time variation, or time is ignored In this class, you need to be able to look an article as an excel sheet.