Preelection Polling in the 1982 Illinois Gubernatorial Contest

All the polls in advance of the 1982 Illinois gubernatorialelection proved incorrect in their prediction of a substantialvictory for James Thompson, the Republican. After examiningsome of the popular explanations for the "missed call," thispaper shows that while the voters "preferred" Thompson, therewas a very substantial increase in the number of straight partyballots cast for the Democrats, compared to 1978. This paperconcludes that in those states where straight party vote isan option, the poll takers probe for the possibility of a partyline vote. Information used in this paper to examine five hypothesesstems from a preelection poll of 1,200 Illinois voters.     

Polls in the Media: Content, Credibility, and Consequences

Polls appearing in the New York Times and on the CBS and NBCevening news programs for three years are categorized, theirtreatment by the media dissected, and their possible politicalimplications analyzed.     

Ethnic Networks and Tolerant Attitudes

This study describes an empirical association between the ethnichomogeneity or heterogeneity of an individual's network of primaryrelations and his or her attitudes toward free speech and childrearing. It argues, following Gordon (1964), that the differencein attitudes between those in homogeneous networks and thosein heterogeneous ones reflects a process of acculturation parallelingsocial assimilation. The basic finding has important consequencesfor any assessment of the present state of ethnicity in Americansociety and raises serious doubts about recent claims of persistingethnic cultural diversity among Americans of European ancestry. Richard D. Alba is Assistant Professor of Sociology, CornellUniversity. An earlier version of this study was read at the1977 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society in New York.The work reported here was supported by a Russell Sage GraduateStudent Fellowship to the author and an NIMH grant, number 1R01 MH23806-01 SSR to Donald Treiman at the Center for PolicyResearch. The author is grateful to Andrew Greeley for permissionto use the Catholic Americans data and to Patrick Bova for providingthem, to Harold Abramson for his encouraging comments on earlydrafts, and to Allen Barton, Steven Cohen, Jonathan Cole, JohnHammond, Charles Kadushin, Robert Merton, and Donald Treiman     

LARGE MONETARY INCENTIVES AND THEIR EFFECT ON MAIL SURVEY RESPONSE RATES

The effect of various large monetary incentives was examinedin a mail survey of owners of small construction subcontractingcompanies. The sample was randomly divided into seven groups,each of which received either a different monetary amount enclosedwith the first mailing ($1 cash, $5 cash, $5 check, $10 check,$20 check, or $40 check) or an offer of a $50 check to be sentonce the questionnaire was returned. These groups were comparedagainst each other and against a control group that did notreceive an incentive. Three follow-up mailings were sent tothe nonrespondents in each group. The results indicate that$1 significantly increased the response rate over the no incentivecontrol condition regardless of the number of mailings. Theresponse rate also increased significantly as the incentiveamount increased from $1 to $5 and from $5 to $20. There wasa nonsignificant difference in response rate between the $5check and $5 cash groups. The promise of $50 did not resultin a significantly higher response rate than the control group.Discussion includes a cost-benefit analysis of the incentives,as well as a section about the increased "favorability" of respondentstoward the survey sponsor within the large incentive groups.     

An Empirical Investigation of Music and Gambling Behaviour

There has been an increasing amount of research that has examined the structural and situational characteristics of gambling behaviour. However, there is a lack of research examining the role of music and gambling. This study investigated the effects of background music on virtual roulette gaming behaviour under laboratory conditions. There was one independent variable of music with three conditions. The three conditions were (i) no music, (ii) slow tempo music, and (iii) fast music. A total of 60 participants were allocated to one of the three conditions. Ten games of roulette were played with speed of betting, amount spent across high, medium and low-level risk bets and total amount spent recorded. The winner with the most money at the end of the session was rewarded with a non-monetary prize. Results indicated that speed of betting was influenced by musical tempo with faster betting occurring while listening to higher tempo music. There was no relationship between musical tempo and either the size of the bet or the overall amount spent. The results provide valuable insight into how background music can be manipulated to increase betting speed. The implications of these findings for problem gambling management and commercial benefits are discussed.     

HAPPINESS,GROWTH, AND PUBLIC POLICY†

If society's goal is to increase people's feelings of well‐being, economic growth in itself will not do the job. Full employment and a generous and comprehensive social safety net do increase happiness. Such policies are arguably affordable not only in higher income nations but also in countries that account for most of the population of the less‐developed world. These conclusions are suggested by an analysis of a wide range of evidence on happiness in countries throughout the world. (JEL I31, I38, O21, F20, D60, E60)     

Aggregate production planning using spreadsheet software

Firms can benefit by developing and using aggregate production plans. However, reports of ongoing production planning applications are rare. The complexity of production planning models has been cited as one of the reasons that firms do not develop formal production plans. This study was conducted to determine if a simple model, trial-and-error on a spreadsheet, could be used to produce cost-effective production planning solutions. Results indicate that good solutions can be obtained using this method. Furthermore, solutions tend to improve as the knowledge of the production planner increases and as time spent developing solutions increases. In addition, experience at producing spreadsheet-based solutions can translate into lower cost solutions for more complex problems while using less time for analysis. These findings indicate that spreadsheets can be effective decision aids for developing production planning solutions. By coupling the power and simplicity of a spreadsheet modelling package with the trial-and-error approach to production planning, model complexity should no longer be cited as a reason for not developing and using formal aggregate production plans.