The "More for Less" Paradox: Public Attitudes on Taxing and Spending

Using a statewide random sample of over 900 respondents, attitudestoward taxing and spending are examined in order to try to explainthe seeming paradox of a public that wants more spending butless taxation. We investigate the possibility that the publicwhich wants more spending is willing to pay for it by meansother than taxes, such as through reallocation or increasednontax revenue. Moderate support for this expectation is found.Overall, the desire fora "free lunch" is not as widespread asa simple comparison of taxing and spending preferences suggests.     

The "Positivity Bias" inEvaluations of Public Figures:Evidence Against Instrument Artifacts

The "positivity bias" is a term used to describe the consistentfavorable evaluation of public figures found in surveys overthe past 40 years. This paper explored several possible artifactualexplanations for this bias,focusing on the survey instrumentitself. Two experiments varied the labeling and ordering ofscale endpoints, the affective value of the initial contextevaluated, and the presence or absence of a prestigious jobtitle associated with the nameof the public figure. None ofthe variations produced significantly different levels of positivitythan the standard control condition used in each experiment.RichardR. Lau is a graduate student in social psychology at the Universityof California, Los Angeles. David O. Sears is Professor of Psychologyand Political Science at UCLA. Richard Centers is Professorof Psychology at UCLA. This research was supported in part byGrant #SOC73-09153 A03 from the National Science Foundationto David O. Sears. The authors wish to expess their thanks toMark Williams, who did most of the coding and checking involvedin the survey.     

Public Hearings and Public Preferences: The Case of the White House Conference on Families

To provide input into Arizona's participation in the White HouseConference on Families, the Arizona Governor's Council on Children,Youth, and Families commissioned a random statewide survey toassess the relative priority given to 41 selected family-relatedneeds and preferences for institutional responses to those needs.A similar survey was administered to participants at each ofsix regional public hearings held throughout the state priorto the 1980 White House Conference on Families. A comparisonof the two surveys provides an opportunity to test the representativenessof public hearings participants with respect to the populationfrom which they were drawn. Fundamental differences in the prioritiesof these two samples cast considerable doubt on the assumptionthat public hearings are an effective means of gauging publicsentiment.     

"Walking the Walk" of Public Service Motivation: Public Employees and Charitable Gifts of Time, Blood, and Money

Research generally indicates that public employees "talk thetalk," but do they also "walk the walk" of the public servicemotive (PSM)? Are public service employees more likely thanothers to engage in public service activities? The behavioralimplications of PSM are addressed by studying the involvementin charitable activities of public, nonprofit, and private workers.Using data from the 2002 General Social Survey, multivariatelogistic regression models are estimated to examine self-reportedgifts of time, blood, and money to charitable organizations.It is found that government employees are more likely to volunteerfor charity and to donate blood than for-profit employees are.Additionally, nonprofit workers are also more likely than theirfor-profit counterparts to volunteer. However, no differenceis found among public service and private employees in termsof individual philanthropy. These findings generally lend supportfor the hypothesis that PSM is more prominent in public servicethan in private organizations, especially as it pertains togovernment personnel.     

Between Ideology and Economy: The "Time Politics" of Child Care and Public Education in the Two Germanys

The article compares the discourses and policies of the "timepolitics" of public, that is, institutionalized, extra-familialcare and education of pre- and elementary school children inEast and West Germany. The FRG and the GDR represented two highlydistinct welfare and education systems, which referred to eachother in a complex relationship of "distancing and interconnection."Proceeding from the concept of the "path dependency" of societaland political developments, the article analyzes which factorsworked together when, how, and in which concrete historicalcontexts to form specific discourses and policies of the "timepolitics" in both German states.     

Public hearings and public preferences: the case of the White House Conference on Families

To provide input into Arizona's participation in the White House Conference on Families, the Arizona Governor's Council on Children, Youth, and Families commissioned a random statewide survey to assess the relative priority given to 41 selected family-related needs and preferences for institutional responses to those needs. A similar survey was administered to participants at each of six regional public hearings held throughout the state prior to the 1980 White House Conference on Families. A comparison of the two surveys provides an opportunity to test the representativeness of public hearings participants with respect to the population from which they were drawn. Fundamental differences in the priorities of these two samples cast considerable doubt on the assumption that public hearings are an effective means of gauging public sentiment.     

Qualifications to Generalized Absolutes: "Approval of Hitting" Questions on the GSS

An analysis of "approval of hitting" questions on the GeneralSocial Surveys finds evidence of correlated error. Respondentsfrequently ignore the absolute phrasing of questions. As a result,they often contradict themselves by approving of specific usesof hitting after having rejected any use of such force. Thesecontradictors tend to have lower education and less supportfor punitive responses on other items.     

"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.     

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.     

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.