Partisanship and Voter Confidence, 2000-2012

To what degree is voter confidence in election procedures driven by satisfaction with the outcome of an election, as opposed to trust in government or objective features of the polling place, such as voting technology? Using approximately 30 national surveys over the past decade, we find a consistent relationship between voting for the winner and confidence in election administration. This confidence varies as a function of question wording and electoral context. Respondents are more confident in the quality of the vote count locally than nationally. They are responsive to electoral results at the state and national levels in forming their judgements. And, rather than being influenced by different types of voting technology, respondents lose confidence by virtue of change itself

Cities with more African Americans rely more on fines for revenue

The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, also focused attention on how police and city officials use fines taken from communities of color to fund city administration. In new research, which examined revenue data from more than 9,000 cities, Michael W. Sances and Hye Young You find that cities with a larger African American population collect a greater number of fines. They also find that the relationship between race and fines is much weaker in cities with Black representation on city councils

Sex difference and intra-operative tidal volume: Insights from the LAS VEGAS study

BACKGROUND: One key element of lung-protective ventilation is the use of a low tidal volume (VT). A sex difference in use of low tidal volume ventilation (LTVV) has been described in critically ill ICU patients.OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to determine whether a sex difference in use of LTVV also exists in operating room patients, and if present what factors drive this difference.DESIGN, PATIENTS AND SETTING: This is a posthoc analysis of LAS VEGAS, a 1-week worldwide observational study in adults requiring intra-operative ventilation during general anaesthesia for surgery in 146 hospitals in 29 countries.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Women and men were compared with respect to use of LTVV, defined as VT of 8 ml kg-1 or less predicted bodyweight (PBW). A VT was deemed 'default' if the set VT was a round number. A mediation analysis assessed which factors may explain the sex difference in use of LTVV during intra-operative ventilation.RESULTS: This analysis includes 9864 patients, of whom 5425 (55%) were women. A default VT was often set, both in women and men; mode VT was 500 ml. Median [IQR] VT was higher in women than in men (8.6 [7.7 to 9.6] vs. 7.6 [6.8 to 8.4] ml kg-1 PBW, P < 0.001). Compared with men, women were twice as likely not to receive LTVV [68.8 vs. 36.0%; relative risk ratio 2.1 (95% CI 1.9 to 2.1), P < 0.001]. In the mediation analysis, patients' height and actual body weight (ABW) explained 81 and 18% of the sex difference in use of LTVV, respectively; it was not explained by the use of a default VT.CONCLUSION: In this worldwide cohort of patients receiving intra-operative ventilation during general anaesthesia for surgery, women received a higher VT than men during intra-operative ventilation. The risk for a female not to receive LTVV during surgery was double that of males. Height and ABW were the two mediators of the sex difference in use of LTVV.TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was registered at Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT01601223

State Policy and Mental Health Outcomes under COVID-19

Abstract Context: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused enormous damage to physiological health and economic security, especially among racial and ethnic minorities. We examined downstream effects on mental health, how effects vary by race and ethnicity, and the role of existing state-level social policies in softening the pandemic's impact. Methods: We analyze an online, multi-wave Census Bureau survey fielded to nearly a million respondents between late April and July 2020. The survey includes questions measuring psychological distress as well as indirect measures of experience with the pandemic. We combined these data with state-level measures of COVID-19 cases, lockdown orders, unemployment filings, and safety net policy. Findings: We find significant mental stress among all respondents and a sizeable gap between nonwhite and white respondents. Adjusting for pandemic experiences eliminates this gap. The effect of losing work as a result of the pandemic is slightly offset by state policies such as unemployment benefit size and Medicaid expansion. The magnitude of these offsetting effects is similar across racial/ethnic groups. Conclusions: The racialized impacts of the pandemic are exacerbated by inequalities in state policy exemplifying structural racism. If the least generous states matched the policies of the most generous, inequalities caused by the pandemic would be diminished.</jats:p

Intraparty polarization in american politics

Research shows that elite polarization and mass sorting have led to an explosion of hostility between parties, but how do Republicans and Democrats feel toward their own respective parties? Have these trends led to more cohesion or more division within parties? Using the American National Election Studies time series, we first show that intraparty polarization between ideologically extreme and ideologically moderate partisans is on the rise. Second, we demonstrate that this division within parties has important implications for how we think about affective polarization between parties. Specifically, the distribution of relative affect between parties has not become bimodal but merely dispersed. Thus, while the mean partisan has become affectively polarized, the modal partisan has not. These results suggest polarization and sorting may be increasing the viability of third-party candidates and making realignment more likely

Over-policing, under-policing, or both? An analysis of police resource allocation

A growing body of empirical and qualitative evidence indicates that local police departments are increasingly being used as sources of revenue for municipalities through the imposition and collection of fees, fines, and asset forfeitures. We examine whether revenue collection activities compromise the criminal investigation functions of local police departments by constructing a novel data set of municipal finances, crime clearance rates, and demographics. We find that municipalities which collect a relatively larger per capita amount of revenue from fees, fines, and forfeitures solve violent crimes at relatively lower rates, conditional on background crime rates, police budgets, and demographics. These findings help to explain the puzzle of why communities which appear to be under intense police surveillance (“over-policed”) often also express demand for additional police resources

Using screeners to measure respondent attention on self-administered surveys: Which items and how many?

Inattentive respondents introduce noise into data sets, weakening correlations between items and increasing the likelihood of null findings. “Screeners” have been proposed as a way to identify inattentive respondents, but questions remain regarding their implementation. First, what is the optimal number of Screeners for identifying inattentive respondents? Second, what types of Screener questions best capture inattention? In this paper, we address both of these questions. Using item-response theory to aggregate individual Screeners we find that four Screeners are sufficient to identify inattentive respondents. Moreover, two grid and two multiple choice questions work well. Our findings have relevance for applied survey research in political science and other disciplines. Most importantly, our recommendations enable the standardization of Screeners on future surveys