Self-interest, beliefs, and policy opinions: understanding how economic beliefs affect immigration policy preferences

Research on how economic factors affect attitudes toward immigration often focuses on labor market effects, concluding that, because workers’ skill levels do not predict opposition to low- versus highly skilled immigration, economic self-interest does not shape policy attitudes. We conduct a new survey to measure beliefs about a range of economic, political, and cultural consequences of immigration. When economic self-interest is broadened to include concerns about the fiscal burdens created by immigration, beliefs about these economic effects strongly correlate with immigration attitudes and explain a significant share of the difference in support for highly versus low-skilled immigration. Although cultural factors are important, our results suggest that previous work underestimates the importance of economic self-interest as a source of immigration policy preferences and attitudes more generally

Ballot secrecy concerns and voter mobilization: new experimental evidence about message source, context, and the duration of mobilization effects

Recent research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an institution persist among the American public. We build on this finding by providing novel field experimental evidence about how information about ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group’s mailing designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent effects of such messages from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters by addressing secrecy concerns, as well as show that attempting to address these beliefs increases long term participation

Subtle linguistic cues may not affect voter behavior: new evidence

One of the most important recent developments in social psychology is the discovery of minor interventions that have large and enduring effects on behavior. A leading example of this class of results is Bryan et al. (2011), which shows that administering a set of survey items worded so that subjects think of themselves as voters (noun treatment) rather than as voting (verb treatment) substantially increases political participation (voter turnout) among subjects. We revisit these experiments by replicating and extending their research design in a large-scale field experiment. In contrast to the 11 to 14 percentage point greater turnout among those exposed to the noun rather than verb treatment reported in Bryan et al. (2011), we find no statistically significant difference in turnout between the noun and verb treatments (the point estimate of the difference is approximately zero). Further, when we benchmark these treatments against a standard get-outthe- vote message, we find that both are less effective at increasing turnout than a much shorter basic mobilization message. In sum, in our experiments, we find no evidence that describing a subject as a voter rather than as voting has a positive relative or absolute effect on subject behavior. In our conclusion, we detail how our study differs from Bryan et al. (2011) and discuss how our results might be interpreted

Inversion of Randomly Corrugated Surfaces Structure from Atom Scattering Data

The Sudden Approximation is applied to invert structural data on randomly corrugated surfaces from inert atom scattering intensities. Several expressions relating experimental observables to surface statistical features are derived. The results suggest that atom (and in particular He) scattering can be used profitably to study hitherto unexplored forms of complex surface disorder.Comment: 10 pages, no figures. Related papers available at http://neon.cchem.berkeley.edu/~dan

Structure of Large Nitrate−Water Clusters at Ambient Temperatures: Simulations with Effective Fragment Potentials and Force Fields with Implications for Atmospheric Chemistry

Structural properties of large NO3−·(H2O)n (n = 15−500) clusters are studied by Monte Carlo simulations using effective fragment potentials (EFPs) and by classical molecular dynamics simulations using a polarizable empirical force field. The simulation results are analyzed with a focus on the description of hydrogen bonding and solvation in the clusters. In addition, a comparison between the electronic structure based EFP and the classical force field description of the 32 water cluster system is presented. The EFP simulations, which focused on the cases of n = 15 and 32, show an internal, fully solvated structure and a “surface adsorbed” structure for the 32 water cluster at 300 K, with the latter configuration being more probable. The internal solvated structure and the “surface adsorbed” structure differ considerably in their hydrogen bonding coordination numbers. The force field based simulations agree qualitatively with these results, and the local geometry of NO3− and solvation at the surface-adsorbed site in the force field simulations are similar to those predicted using EFPs. Differences and similarities between the description of hydrogen bonding of the anion in the two approaches are discussed. Extensive classical force field based simulations at 250 K predict that long time scale stability of “internal” NO3−, which is characteristic of extended bulk aqueous interfaces, emerges only for n \u3e 300. Ab initio Møller−Plesset perturbation theory is used to test the geometries of selected surface and interior anions for n = 32, and the results are compared to the EFP and MD simulations. Qualitatively, all approaches agree that surface structures are preferred over the interior structures for clusters of this size. The relatively large aqueous clusters of NO3− studied here are of comparable size to clusters that lead to new particle formation in air. Nitrate ions on the surface of such clusters may have significantly different photochemistry than the internal species. The possible implications of surface-adsorbed nitrate ions for atmospheric chemistry are discussed

Reporting guidelines for experimental research: A report from the experimental research section standards committee.

The standards committee of the Experimental Research section was charged with preparing a set of reporting guidelines for experimental research in political science. The committee defined its task as compiling a set of guidelines sufficient to enable the reader or reviewer to follow what the researcher had done and to assess the validity of the conclusions the researcher had drawn. Although the guidelines do request the reporting of some basic statistics, they do not attempt to weigh in on statistical controversies. Rather, they aim for something more modest but nevertheless crucial: to ensure that scholars clearly describe what it is they did at each step in their research and clearly report what their data show. In this paper, we discuss the rationale for reporting guidelines and the process used to formulate the specific guidelines we endorse. The guidelines themselves are included in Appendix 1

Coping tendencies and changes in athlete burnout over time

Burnout can lead to numerous negative outcomes for athletes. While we know a reasonable amount about how athlete burnout develops over time, we know comparably less about the role of coping in this process. The present study aimed to help address this issue by examining the role of coping tendencies in predicting changes in athlete burnout over a six-month period. A sample of 141 junior athletes (mean age = 17.3 years) completed measures of coping tendencies (problem-focused and avoidance coping) and burnout. Participants also completed the measure of burnout on two further occasions, three months and six months after the initial assessment. Conditional latent growth curve modelling revealed that coping tendencies predicted changes in athlete burnout over time. In this regard, avoidance coping predicted increases in athlete burnout, whereas problem-focused coping was unrelated to changes in athlete burnout. These findings provide evidence that an athlete’s tendency to use avoidance coping strategies is linked to burnout development over time