Sep 23, 2013 | Elections, Innovative Methodology, National
Post developed by Katie Brown in coordination with Cara Wong.
The maps below show the same small city. The shaded area shows how residents delineate their community. The differences are notable. But do these internal maps impact how people make political decisions?
Center for Political Studies Adjunct Faculty Associate and University of Illinois Associate Professor of Political Science Cara Wong studies perceptions of communities and how this impacts policy support. With colleagues Jake Bowers and Tarah Foster Williams of the University of Illinois, and Katherine Drake Simmons of the Pew Research Center, Wong published a paper in the Journal of Politics that considers how these mental maps relate to policy support.
In the study, participants were shown a map of the blocks surrounding their home and a map of their county, and asked to highlight their local community on either. Two thirds focused on the block maps, while one third shaded communities on the county maps. The size highlighted ranged from smaller than a block to larger than two cities. Some participants even highlighted non-contiguous areas.
Then, the participants were asked to describe the demographics of the area they highlighted. Questions included the proportion of blacks and whites, Democrats and Republicans, and unemployed. Next, they were asked about their take on these factors in the United States in general. Results show that participants view their communities and the United States at large as having more blacks (15% more on average) and fewer whites than the census. Unemployment and racial distortions are bigger than partisan distortions. All three are distorted to some extent across the block, community, and country levels.
The highlighted areas varied between participants. Their internal maps of their communities also differ from how the government creates administrative boundaries. But to what effect?
These discrepancies can play out in the voting booth and in day to day {day-to-day} behaviors. As Wong et al. explain:
The ‘fear of crime’ literature in sociology has explained that personal and altruistic fear—regardless of accuracy—leads to purchases (e.g., guns), behavioral changes (e.g., not going out at night), and abandonment of locations (e.g., parks and industrial areas). Political scientists need to understand whether perceptions of community heterogeneity and interracial competition have equally serious consequences for political actions and outcomes.
Sep 19, 2013 | Elections, Innovative Methodology, International
Post developed by Katie Brown in coordination with Brian Min.
This satellite image identifies nightlights in Africa. The accuracy of maps like this has been validated for developed regions. But how accurate are these maps for smaller villages in developing nations, like Western Africa?
Center for Political Studies (CPS) researcher Brian Min – along with Kwawu Mensan Gaba, Ousmane Fall Sarr, and Alassane Agalassou – tested the efficacy of this imagery. The resulting article, “Detection of Rural Electrification in Africa Using DMSP-OLS Night Lights Imagery,” was just published in International Journal of Remote Sensing. The study is part of Min’s larger World Bank initiative titled “Tracking Light from the Sky.”
The project seeks to test the reliability of DMSP-OLS imagery. The study focuses on Senegal and Mali and consists of two parts. On the ground, the researchers interviewed the chiefs of 202 villages in Senegal and the AMADER operators in 30 villages in Mali about electricity use. These results were coupled with data on 800 unelectrified villages in Senegal and 99 in Mali, as identified via administrative data and paper maps. Then, the data were compared to DMSP-OLS imagery.
The study finds that DMSP-OLS imagery is indeed a reliable indicator of electricity in villages. But there are some caveats. First, streetlights drive light detection, whereas household electricity does not register as brightly. So, villages with more streetlights appear brighter in the satellite imagery. Second, the imagery is sensitive to weather conditions, especially cloud cover. Finally, the reliability of the images increases when they are composites created over time. For example, the image below shows the two countries – Senegal to the west and part of Mali to the east – over the course of May 2011.
Validating DMSP-OLS as an indicator of electricity in remote villages of the developing world has several implications. First, these images are more cost effective than on-the-ground surveys. Second, these images are captured nightly, creating a natural archive. Third, this allows identification of otherwise remote villages in the developing world.
With DMSP-OLS, the World Bank can monitor existing projects and initiate new projects to enhance global connectivity, communication, and transparency.
Sep 5, 2013 | Current Events, Elections, Innovative Methodology, National
Post developed by Katie Brown in coordination with Michael Traugott.
In the American presidential election of 2012, most polls predicted a narrow win for Democratic incumbent Barack Obama over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. But on November 5, 2012, Obama won both the popular vote (62,611,250 to 59,134,475) and the Electoral College (332 to 206) by a comfortable margin.
Most major polling organizations underestimated Obama’s votes, yet closely targeted Romney’s outcome. Gallup and Rasmussen, on the other hand, overestimated Romney’s vote share, projecting that he would win.
In order to understand its error and, more importantly, correct its estimation for future elections, Gallup called upon Professor of Communication Studies and Center for Political Studies (CPS) Research Professor Mike Traugott. Traugott studies public opinion, survey methodology, and voting technology, with more than 100 articles and book chapters and 12 books published.
Traugott’s connection to the project goes beyond his expertise. Early in his career, he worked for Gallup founder George Gallup. Traugott has also served as president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). In 2008, he chaired an AAPOR committee to investigate the causes of an industry-wide estimation error in the New Hampshire primary. As a follow up, AAPOR launched an initiative to make polling practices more transparent. Though the initiative garnered initial support, it hasn’t matured as rapidly as hoped because many commercial firms are reluctant to expose their proprietary methods. Yet, given the widespread mispredictions of 2012, Gallup agreed to make its investigation transparent as a service to the public and the pre-election polling profession.
Gallup’s initial investigation, led by Traugott and published here, identifies several potential contributing factors to the errant projection. The main problem appears to lie in the sampling design. Gallup interviews potential voters using only a combination of listed landline and cell phones. Because listed landline users are more likely to be conservative, Gallup’s respondent pool skewed conservative. Other potential factors include giving more weight to past voting behavior than other polls, time zone issues, and the format of race and ethnicity questions. Further, Gallup, like other major polling organizations, does not take the candidates’ campaign effort into account. As this map illustrates, in 2012, the candidates focused most of their campaign spending in battleground states, which in turn impacted turnout and vote choice by state.
In response to the report, Gallup has brought in a team of researchers which will test the hypotheses derived from the initial report during the 2013 New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections. Traugott is also leading a graduate seminar this fall at the University of Michigan that will allow students to participate in the design of the experiments and analyze data related to the inquiry. According to Traugott, this is a “very unusual, almost once in a lifetime chance to combine real world applications of conceptual and theoretical issues about survey design.”
Aug 22, 2013 | Innovative Methodology, National, Social Policy
Post developed by Katie Brown in coordination with Nicholas Valentino
Photo credit: Thinkstock
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, airport security has become a grave and expensive endeavor, projected to cost $45 billion by 2018. News stories about airport security scares or the ridiculousness of airport security scares proliferate. Other stories concern the efficacy of racial profiling, particularly of Arab passengers. A new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program called SPOT – Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique – targets suspicious behavior in security lines with in-depth questioning. This program alone has cost $878 million. And SPOT faces criticisms for propagating racial profiling.
Forthcoming research by Center for Political Studies researcher Nicholas Valentino, along with colleagues Cigdem Sirin and Jose Villalobos from the University of Texas El Paso, explore the factors that explain support for racial profiling. In particular these scholars wondered whether different racial groups, with their different experiences with discrimination, react distinctly to security policies that involve profiling.
Valentino and colleagues investigated this question in an experiment. The sample focused on three racial groups and included 221 whites, 193 blacks, and 207 Latinos. All participants read a vignette:
Recently, a passenger was flying from New York to Chicago when he was pulled out of a security line, searched, and questioned. The passenger was talking on his cell phone while waiting in line to board his flight. One of the airport security officers standing nearby said that he heard the passenger say, “It’s a go!” which qualifies as suspicious behavior according to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) guidelines. In response, the airport security officer took the passenger aside for further screening. The passenger, however, claims that when it was his turn to board the plane, he had told the person on the phone, “I’ve got to go!” and hung up. Amid the controversy, the airport security officer said that he had a reasonable cause to search and question the passenger. The passenger, on the other hand, said that the additional screening was unwarranted.
The picture presented alongside the text varied, with participants randomized to see a suspect from one of four racial groups: black, white, Latino, or Arab. Pictures were pretested to ensure equality on all dimensions except ethnic identity. After reading the story, participants answered several questions, including, “Who are you more likely to agree with in this case—the airport security officer or the passenger?” and “What do you think about the response by the airport security officer—do you think he had a reasonable cause to search and question the passenger?”
The graph below displays the results for the Arab passenger scenario. Compared to whites, blacks and Latinos showed less support for extra airport security measures targeting an Arab passenger. Further, the likelihood of siding with the Arab passenger is about 36 percent higher for black respondents and about 26 percent higher for Latino respondents.
Yet, blacks and Latinos perceive themselves to be at higher risk of personal threat from terrorism. Valentino and colleagues suggest this pattern is consistent with Group Empathy Theory, which holds that empathy for one group by another, even when the two are in competition for the same resources, mitigates support for harsh security tactics.
Lawmakers and TSA programs should keep in mind, as Valentino states, “These results demonstrate that anti-Arab sentiment is not distributed uniformly throughout society, and support our theory that the power of existential threats on tolerance is moderated by group empathy.”
