Projects

Can Marketing Data Improve Survey Sampling?

Working in conjunction with Knowledge Networks, this project explores whether ancillary data purchased from consumer marketing companies can be used to accurately identify niche populations for survey research and to produce effective survey weights.  We also assess the extent to … Continue reading

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How Have Racial Attitudes Influenced the Obama Administration?

In 2008, many predicted that the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States would fundamentally change racial attitudes in the country.  This project compares racial attitudes before the 2008 election to similar attitudes in early 2010.  This … Continue reading

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Does Campaign-Specific Political Knowledge Matter?

While political scientists have long recognized the strong relationship between general political knowledge and voter turnout, less work has attempted to explore how knowing generalized political facts — such as the proportion of Congress required to override a presidential veto … Continue reading

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How Do Self-Selected Internet Samples Differ from Representative Samples?

Using opt-in Internet samples for political data is far less expensive than most forms of traditional probability sampling. In some analyses of opt-in samples, researchers have found that opt-in sample estimators provide good approximations of electoral results.  In others, the … Continue reading

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Candidate Name Order

Do candidates listed earlier on the ballot perform better than those listed later?  This research seeks to understand how candidate performance relates to ballot placement through an evaluation of the influence of name order in California general elections. Project has … Continue reading

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Influence of Social Media on Political Information Environment

This project seeks to understand how online social networks influence the political information environment of their users.  Through a combination of surveys and Facebook application data, this research is assessing how much information is shared over Facebook, how much of … Continue reading

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