CHANGING RACIAL LABELS: FROM "COLORED" TO "NEGRO" TO "BLACK" TO "AFRICAN AMERICAN"

Labels play an important role in defining groups and individualswho belong to the groups. This has been especially true forracial and ethnic groups in general and for Blacks in particular.Over the past century the standard term for Blacks has shiftedfrom "Colored" to "Negro" to "Black" and now perhaps to "AfricanAmerican." The changes can be seen as attempts by Blacks toredefine themselves and to gain respect and standing in a societythat has held them to be subordinate and inferior.     

"Coloured Power" or "Coloured Bourgeoisie"? Political Attitudes among South African Coloureds

Why have Coloureds in South Africa—people of mixed racialdescent—voiced less opposition to white minority rulethan have black Africans? A theoretical analysis suggests thatColoureds feel both "relatively deprived" in comparison withwhites and "relatively gratified" in comparison with Africans,that they believe they may eventually be accepted by whites,and that individually they have difficulty identifying withthe broader Coloured community; in short, seemingly ideal conditionsfor the emergence of a "Coloured Bourgeoisie" rather than a"Coloured Power" ideology.     

Reporting "The Polls" in 2004

Media reports of polls indicate how well public opinion pollshave been integrated into campaign coverage. This article examineshow polls were used in 2004. Although there were relativelylimited methodological changes in how polls were conducted in2004, there were changes in how the polls were treated in themedia. Americans in 2004 were subjected to intense debates aboutpolls and to as much reporting about "the polls" as there wasof the polls themselves. The discussion of "the polls" in 2004included claims of electability during the Democratic nominatingprocess, increased reporting about methodological issues, andheightened political criticisms of "the polls." The articleconcludes with a discussion of the current state and the futureof news polling.     

"BY PUBLIC OPINION I MEAN"--

"Where all people talk on the same subject, they should be agreedabout the vocabulary with which they discuss it: or, at anyrate, they should be aware that they are not agreed."     

DO OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS MEASURE "SALIENT" ISSUES?

Closed-ended questions dominate most interview schedules. Yetthe almost exclusive use of this form did not arise becauseopen-ended questions, its major competitor, proved to be weakindicators of public opinion. Instead, responses from open-endedquestions proved more difficult and expensive to code and analyzethan those from closed-ended questions. Although such practicalconcerns are important, the real task of survey researchersis to measure public opinion accurately. Using an experimentaldesign, this article tests whether open-ended questions measurethe important concerns of respondents—one of the long-claimedadvantages of this format. The results, on balance, show thatopen-ended comments reflect such concerns, suggesting that pollstersmay want to include more of these questions in their surveysof public opinion.     

Correction to "The Polls: Environmental Protection"

In "The Polls: Environmental Protection" (POQ 50 (2):273) thefollowing figures are the correct ones: NORC-GSS, 1985, Toomuch: 8%, Dk: 4%; Roper, 1983, Too far: 14%.     

ELECTORAL CONSEQUENCES OF "WINNING" TELEVISED CAMPAIGN DEBATES

This study explores the long-neglected impact of a candidatebeing perceived as the "winner" of political debates on individualvoting behaviour in West Germany. While there has been muchresearch on the effects of debates on perceptions of candidatepolicy stands and personality atttributes, there has been littlework that attempts to guage how much "winning" the debate helpsa candidate at the polls. I investigate this process with straightforwardprobit models of the vote choice, including party identificationand candiate evaluation as well as whether the individual judgeda particular candidate as the "winner", or "fared best" in thedebate. These models are run for the 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1983elections in West Germany. The results show that there is aconsistent impact of "winning" the debate on individual votingchoices in West Germany; controlling for party and other factors,there is a significantly higher probability of voting for theparty of the politician the respondent feels won the contest.Debates, then, do ultimately make a substabtial electoral difference.     

"SECRET BALLOTS" AND SELF-REPORTS IN AN EXIT-POLL EXPERIMENT

A controlled exit-poll experiment on Election Day (November3, 1992) shows that refusals to answer questions and other evasiveforms of responding were significantly lower when respondentswere given a self-administered "secret-ballot" questionnairethan when they were interviewed face-to-face. While there weresome suggestive interactions of this mode-of-data collectioneffect with age and sex, and with the partisan atmosphere ofthe precinct in which the interviews were conducted, they wereborderline in significance, inconsistent in pattern, or difficuitto interpret. More important, comparisons with official electionreturns (the truth) indicated that the secret-ballot techniquewas more accurate than were face-to-face interviews in estimatingthe final outcome on the most socially sensitive of three self-reportedvotes: a vote for or against a tax levy for elderly services.Using a genuine secret ballot in the tradition of the olderGallup preelection polls can thus increase the validity of self-reportsin exit polls today.     

On More Reliably Employing the Concept of "Reliability"

Confusion has resulted from using the term "reliability" tomean both measurement-error variance and sampling-error variance.This article discusses the conceptual similarities and differencesbetween the various types of variance subsumed under "reliability"in order to distinguish among them.     

Making Child Care "Affordable" in the United States

Two alternative federally financed plans are presented as modelsfor a program which would make child care of acceptable quality"affordable" for millions of American families. Taking a cuefrom currently operating state programs, care is defined as"affordable" if it costs parents no more than 30 percent ofthe amount by which their income exceeds the poverty line. Thefirst plan would cost the government $25 billion per year andwould concentrate help on families with incomes up to twicethe poverty line. The second would cost $39 billion per year,would provide higher quality care, and would allow all UnitedStates families to have access to care that was "affordable"by our definition. Costs of these magnitudes preclude financingof any significant part by employers or philanthropies. Whilesome government savings might result from the beneficial effectsof these programs, the main rationale for them rests, not onthe calculation that they will save the government money (althoughthey might), but on the fact that they will prevent considerablemisery to children and their families. Making quality childcare affordable to all families would result in safer, moreeducational, and more enjoyable care for children, and wouldgive a financial boost to families pitifully short of resourcesin a non-stigmatizing way. It would reduce child poverty andreduce enrollment in welfare-type programs. It would also giveparents a chance to particiopate in the world of work and toachieve the gains in resources and status that such a participationwould alllow.     

"Little" and "Big" Pictures in Our Heads: Race, Local Context, and Innumeracy About Racial Groups in the United States

Americans do not know what percentage of the nation's residentsare whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians.Using the 2000 General Social Survey, I find that respondentsof all races underestimate the percentages of whites and overestimatethe percentages of racial/ethnic minority groups and multiracialAmericans in the United States; however, they perceive theirlocal communities quite differently. As a first step towardunderstanding this discrepancy, I test whether individuals’local surroundings serve as a source of information for theirpictures of the United States. I examine the relationship between"objective" data and respondents’ subjective perceptionsof where they live, and compare their respective effects onAmericans’ perceptions of the nation. Multivariate multilevelanalyses show that respondents’ perceptions of differentracial group sizes in their communities are the strongest predictorsof innumeracy at the national level, while "objective" racialcontext measured at the local level has less of an effect. Thesefindings have important implications for research on racialcontext, which assumes that census numbers for respondents’locales are good proxies for their perceptions of the size ofracial/ethnic groups in their communities. Furthermore, thesefindings suggest that scholars need to start thinking aboutwhy whites and non-whites have similar "big pictures" of thenation, why their "little pictures" vary a great deal, and whythe motivations for over- and underestimation may differ byracial/ethnic group.     

"Shielding" the Knowledge Transfer Process in Human Service Research

Knowledge utilization studies aim to understand the pathwayswhereby research moves from a specific set of producers to aspecific set of consumers. Broadly speaking, two sets of explanationsexist: (1) the engineering model, which focuses on the inevitabilityof science in advancing knowledge, and (2) the socio-organizationalmodel, which stresses the importance of communication betweenand among groups as the critical factor in promoting utilization.This study asks both research managers at the Department ofHealth and Human Services and representatives from a particularset of consumer organizations to elaborate on the qualitiesof the research process that make knowledge most useful to them.We find that the qualities valued in both communities signalconvergence around a novel third approach—the shield model—inwhich aspects of the original two models reinforce a powerfulprofessional norm of objectivity that shelters the knowledgeproduction and transmission process from external politicalpressures.