Date:
Location:
Speakers
Matthew Dardet, "Respondent Psychology and Nonresponse Bias in Political Surveys"
Aidan Connaughton, "The Value of Public Comment for Local Bureaucrats"
Abstracts
"Respondent Psychology and Nonresponse Bias in Political Surveys"
Individuals’ personalities are correlated with many of their political attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and identifications. Moreover, initial research has indicated that personality may play a role in determining survey nonresponse and in shaping within-survey response patterns. Survey nonresponse has been increasing in Western nations, and poststratification weighting on sociodemographic variables often fails to account for the differences between respondents and nonrespondents. This article demonstrates that supposedly representative survey samples and survey modes differ significantly in their personality distributions, even after weighting on a traditional set of sociodemographic variables. Personality traits are then shown to be significantly associated with within-survey response patterns such as acquiescence responding, extreme responding, midpoint responding, “don’t know” or no opinion responding, open-ended response proclivities, and overall survey administration times. Personality and other psychological variables may ultimately be construed as correlates of both unit-level survey nonresponse and substantive item-level response, forming a linkage crucial to understanding nonresponse bias in the modern surveying milieu. These nonresponse biases have profound implications for experiments, polling, and estimates generated from traditional internet surveys regarding belief in conspiracy theories and support for political violence.
"The Value of Public Comment for Local Bureaucrats"
At the local level, there has been significant progress in understanding the roles and preferences of citizens, interest groups, and elected officials. However, one group of actors has been understudied: local bureaucrats. I hypothesize that local bureaucrats, including volunteer members of local boards and other actors involved in the policy implementation process, perceive the citizens they encounter during public interfaces to be unrepresentative and occasionally at odds with the best interests of their communities. Nevertheless, I also hypothesize that these local bureaucrats tend to be unrepresentative of their communities in ways that may influence policy outcomes and the ways that they incorporate public input. This proposed research will build a theory of local bureaucratic decision-making and policy implementation, test the influence of public comment against other relevant factors, and explore the effects of institutional variation using qualitative methods and elite surveys of local bureaucrats with a specific focus on city planning and housing policy.
The American Politics Research Workshop (Gov 3004) presents an opportunity for graduate students and Harvard faculty to present and receive feedback on their current research. The workshop highlights key theoretical and empirical findings from Harvard affiliates on topics related to American politics.
All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.